
'::'.'•■■•: 



5 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Gfpp.- 6npjjrigyi?0 

Shelf _J*£L3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






THROUGH THE SHADOWS 



<j 



& BY 



REV. I: C. KNOWLTON. 



"In Thy light shall we see light." 

Psalm xxxvi. 9. 



J> 




BOSTON: 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
1885. 






Copyright, 1885, 
By Universalist Publishing House. 



Slmbcrsilg Jlrcss: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



1 



IP 



2Co tfje mang JFrfentos, 



WHOSE GENEROUS ASSISTANCE ENABLED ME TO DEVOTE A 

LIFE-TIME TO THE STUDY OF THE SACRED 

SCRIPTURES, 

THIS VOLUME 
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. 



PREFACE, 



HHHIS book is not published to enlighten learned 
theologians. It contains no fact, no line 
of argument, with which they are not familiar. 
Instead, it is intended to assist that large and 
respectable class of intelligent men and women 
who have not an opportunity to study the Bible 
critically, but who would like to know the real 
meaning of those ominous passages of Scripture 
that are supposed by some people to indicate the 
destiny of impenitent sinners in the future life. 
It is not a controversial treatise, but a candid, 
careful attempt to ascertain, if possible, the exact 
import of the Word of God. 

Several years ago, the writer of these pages 
became dissatisfied with that kind of Scriptural 
comment which consists in attempts to show 
what certain controverted texts do not mean. 
He wanted to know what they do mean. He 
was aware of the impressive fact that a great 



IV PREFACE. 

many devout Christians believe the Bible clearly 
teaches a hopeless doom for the finally impeni- 
tent. These Christians did not make or choose 
their creed. It came to them through the writ- 
ings and preaching of eminent divines in every 
century since the days of Saint Augustine, and 
they could hardly avoid accepting it as truth. 
Again and again the thought arose in the au- 
thor's mind : " Perhaps these many good and wise 
men are right, and you are holding an error. 
Would it not be well for you to examine again 
all the supposed proof -texts ? If in error, you are 
not only a 'blind leader of the blind,' but you 
perhaps are in imminent danger of being lost." 
Moved by these considerations, he began afresh 
to study the Bible, to weigh the meaning of 
words, to notice contexts, to look up the history 
of the ideas expressed by the sacred writers of 
all the books from Genesis to Revelation. At 
times he even tried to " twist the texts," to make 
them, if possible, disprove Universalism. The 
work was not done in a hurry; the investigation 
occupied years ; and the chapters in this volume 
are the result. They may contain erroneous state- 
ments and lame logic, — no human work is per- 
fect, — but they are the honest convictions of a 
candid searcher after truth. 



PREFACE. v 

In these pages there are only a few references 
to other books than the Bible, and for three 
reasons : First, because an array of names and 
opinions on one side can often be cancelled by an 
equal array on the other side ; second, because 
very few readers ever try to find and verify a 
quotation ; and third, because the author has not, 
at present, ready access to a large library. But 
the reading and reasoning of fifty years are here 
condensed and embodied in statements so defi- 
nite and credible as not to admit a doubt of the 
writer's honesty and sincerity. The use of Greek 
and Hebrew type is excluded, because, though 
giving an air of erudition, it is an annoyance to 
persons unacquainted with these ancient alpha- 
bets ; and most of those who will read this book 
belong to that large class. 

With this brief preface, go forth, little book, 
and kindly greet the many dear friends of the 
author. Some of them you may find far away ; 
some of them he may not again see in this world. 
But the old friendship is still warm, and the old 
wish is still earnest, that all may hear the " glad 
tidings of great joy," and find the path that leads 
through the shadows. 

I. C. K. 

Acton, Mass., July, 1885. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. An Alarming Fact 9 

II. Proof-texts 12 

III. First Warning 16 

IV. Forsaken of God 27 

V. The Angry God 38 

VI. The Hopeless . . . . . ... . 46 

VII. Siieol 57 

VIII. Hades 68 

IX. Gehenna 83 

X. Annihilation 103 

XI. Unforgiven 113 

XII. The Fearful Hands of God . . . 122 

XIII. Not Born Again 130 

XIV. Resurrection of Damnation . . . 140 
XV. The General Judgment 151 

XVI. The Second Death 162 

XVII. Spirits in Prison 174 

XVIII. Everlasting Punishment 182 

XIX. Endless Misery 192 

XX. Into the Light 203 



THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



AN ALARMING FACT. 

" Flee from the wrath to come" — Matt. iii. 7. 

TT is an alarming fact that during the past fifteen 
hundred years, or more, a large majority of the 
people called Christian have believed that the Bible 
plainly teaches that many millions of human souls, 
as keenly sensitive to pain and pleasure as we are, 
will, as a punishment for their sins, be extremely un- 
happy forever. And to-day this is not only the be- 
lief of the ignorant and superstitious, but the firm 
conviction of a great many educated, tender-hearted, 
and truly pious church-members. This belief is 
taught as a Bible doctrine, in religious creeds and 
professions of faith, in the pulpit and Sunda} T -school, 
in newspapers, magazines, and books, throughout 
Christendom. Moreover, it is asserted by many 
that not only vile sinners, but all the unconverted, 
though they are honest and respectable, — even the 
writer and the reader of these lines, — are in danger 



10 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

of this awful, unending doom. The mere statement 
of this gloom}' doctrine is alarming ; and the thought 
that perhaps some of our own dear friends are now 
in the realm of woe, and that others — even ourselves 
-^may also " suffer the vengeance of eternal fire," is 
severely painful, even to the best Christians. It 
drives some souls to doubt the goodness of God, 
some to hate religion, and some to sink into despair 
and become insane. A dispensation of Providence 
so dreadful would indeed be " dark, dark, dark;" 
and those who believe in it must ever feel the chill of 
horror and the shadow of doubt. 

This alarming doctrine comes to all the children 
born in Christian lands, and clouds their minds with 
doubt ; and the first and greatest question for them 
and every human being to ponder, and if possible 
answer, is this, — Is this dogma true or false? If 
true, we ought to hasten to "flee from the wrath to 
come ; " if false, all men, and especially the young, 
ought to be relieved of the gloom with which it shad- 
ows the mind. This being evident, a lively discus- 
sion of the question is going on, and will go on until 
a correct conclusion is reached by all. At present 
we can only say that although some Christians in 
ever}' century of our era have believed in the final 
holiness and happiness of all souls, a large majority 
of church-members believe — and in the Dark Ages, 
from a. d. 500 to a. d. 1500, nearly all believed — in 
the endless misery of all who die in their sins. If 



AN ALARMING FACT. 11 

the question was to be decided by vote, Universalism 
would be overwhelmed ; but it is a noteworthy fact 
that the majority is not always in the right. 

It is admitted by all candid people that neither 
Nature nor unaided human reason can solve this mo- 
mentous problem. This world has a vast amount of 
apparent w r rong and real suffering, but Nature does 
not intimate anything but peace after death. Reason 
can push analogy into the spirit realm, but analogy 
is not reliable. Revelation alone is authoritative ; 
and to it we must all go for light and truth on this 
subject. What the Bible distinctly asserts, all Chris- 
tians are willing to accept as truth. But it is a large 
and ancient book, originally written in Greek and 
Hebrew ; and it therefore requires much careful study 
to get its exact meaning. Hence, before attempting 
to " flee from the wrath to come," it is every person's 
dut}^ to consult the Law and the Prophets, the words 
of Jesus and his Apostles, and thus try to ascertain 
in what the wrath consists, and how to flee from its 
woe. One must know in what direction to flee, or be 
in danger of running into trouble instead of away 
from it. Sometimes the ignorant as well as the 
wicked "flee when no man pursueth," and some- 
times the wise do not flee as they should. Let us 
investigate. 



12 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



II 

PROOF-TEXTS. 

" Search the Scriptures." — John v. 39. 

TF the ultimate salvation of all mankind is a Bible 
doctrine, we have good reason to expect that so 
great and glorious a truth is clearly and frequently 
stated in the Good Book, and that nothing denying 
it or rendering it doubtful can be found in a single 
chapter or verse. All other important doctrines are 
set forth distinctly and unequivocally. For exam- 
ple, the Scriptures plainly teach the existence of a 
Supreme Being, our relation to Him, our duty, the 
evil of sin, the beauty of holiness, the certain t} T of 
retribution, and the immortality of man ; and not 
one passage asserts or hints anything to the con- 
trary. The atheist never quotes Scripture to prove 
atheism, nor does the sinner cite the Bible as his 
authority for doing wrong. 

That eminent defender of the faith, the late Rev. 
Dr. Thomas Whittemore, in his " Plain Guide to Uni- 
versalism," admits that there are one hundred and 
twenty-five passages — thirty in the Old Testament, 
and ninety-five in the New — that are sometimes 
quoted to disprove Universalism. And in addition to 



PROOF-TEXTS. 13 

this formidable array of proof- texts, it is claimed by 
some that there are many other passages that favor 
the doctrine of endless misery. This is a cloud 
of witnesses ; and if their evidence is understood, 
and if a large majority of the Christian Church for 
centuries has not misunderstood its meaning, Uni- 
versalists should either give up their doctrine or 
renounce and denounce the Bible. But every edu- 
cated student of the Scriptures knows, and every 
honest theologian is willing to admit, that some of 
these proof-texts are not positive and conclusive 
evidence of interminable woe, and that the force 
and weight of the others depend on the mean- 
ing attached to about a dozen different words and 
phrases. Give them the usual definition, and they 
clearly disprove Universalism. Invalidate this time- 
honored interpretation, and the doctrine of eternal 
punishment loses its Scriptural foothold. Over these 
few words and phrases the last theological battle is 
to be fought, and the final victory won ; and in a 
matter of so great interest to all mankind, nothing 
should be overlooked, and nothing assumed that is 
not in accord with philosophy, histoiy, and the usus 
loquendi of the people in the land and age in which 
the Scriptures were written. When, if ever, we 
ascertain exactly what the inspired penmen wrote 
(for emendation of the Greek and Hebrew text is 
still going on), and exactly what they meant by 
the language employed, then, and not till then, will 



14 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

controversy cease. But that time has not yet come. 
A person who takes the common version of the Bible 
to be the precise Word of God, and proceeds to in- 
terpret it by the help of an English dictionary, is 
sure to fall into grave mistakes. An}' one who care- 
fully studies the revised version of the New Tes- 
tament, and compares it with the common version, 
will be convinced that a perfect knowledge of the 
Scriptures is not easily attained. We know that 
some blunders have been made in explaining the 
Word of God, and this leads us to suspect that 
others have also been made. It is admitted that 
there are thousands of various readings, and some 
interpolations; for example (1 John v. 7), "There 
are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, 
the Word, and the Holy Spirit ; and these three are 
one." All divines of the present day agree in the 
opinion that Saint John did not write these words. 
The passage is not in the revised version. Other 
proof-texts may yet vanish. The exact meaning of 
Azazel and Selah, in the Old Testament, is not cer- 
tainly known ; and there may be many other words 
in the Bible whose import is not yet decided. Edu- 
cated men differ in opinion respecting those words ; 
and persons not acquainted with Greek and Hebrew 
are not qualified to decide the controversy which 
hinges on the meaning of the original words ren- 
dered hell, damnation, and eternal. This being the 
case, we must either pin our faith on the opinion 



PROOF-TEXTS. 15 

of others, or, time and again, with the best helps 
and lights within reach, go over the entire field in 
dispute, and decide for ourselves what the Bible 
teaches. This seems to us the wisest and best 
course. 



16 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



III. 

FIRST WARNING. 

" Of the tree of the "knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not 
eat; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
die." — Gen. ii. 17. 

TN the olden time, " eastward in Eden," there was 
a beautiful garden, in which grew man}' kinds of 
fruit trees, all planted by the Lord. It was an earthly 
Paradise; and in it dwelt our ancestors, — the first 
human pair, young, innocent, and happy, but frail, 
ignorant, and mortal. Their Father was ever near 
them, and they were very dear to Him, because they 
were His children and in His image and likeness. In 
the midst of the garden there stood a tree whose fruit 
was not wholesome for man to eat. It contained 
poison ; and God kindly warned Adam and Eve not 
to meddle with it, and gave this reason for His warn- 
ing : "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt 
[or wilt] surely die," or, as it is rendered in the 
margin, "In the day that eating thou eatest, dying 
thou shalt die." 

This is the first warning in the history of the hu- 
man race. What did it mean, and what happened? 
The heedless and perhaps forgetful pair, unmindful 
of their Father's words, possibly not realizing the ter- 



FIRST WARNING. 17 

ribleness of the assured result of eating, tempted and 
misled by the words or actions of an animal called by 
our translators a serpent, plucked and ate the forbid- 
den fruit ; and the result, the penalty, came upon 
them. That penalty was death ; and we are some- 
times told that it was "death physical, spiritual, and 
eternal." Is this true? Did this threefold death 
take place on the clay they ate ? As this event was 
the beginning of sin and retribution, a correct idea 
of it is essential to a right understanding of God's 
policy, and His subsequent dealings with sinners. 

The warning is in the form of a command, and is 
the enunciation of a law. " Of the tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat." This was a 
law that existed in the nature and relations of things. 
There were other similar laws ; for example, Thou 
shalt not abstain from eating wholesome food, drink- 
ing pure water, and breathing fresh air, — for if thou 
do, thou shalt surely die ; Thou shalt not attempt to 
live under water or in the midst of fire, — for if thou 
do, death will be the result ; Ye shall live in peace and 
love, or war, misery, and death will be your portion. 
Then, as now, the human body w r as frail and mortal, 
and life could not be prolonged without obedience to 
the sanitary laws of our nature. May it not be that 
the "forbidden fruit" was poisonous, and the warn- 
ing was given on that account ? The law, Thou shalt 
not eat the fruit of this or that tree, is certainly much 
like other sanitary laws ; and the penalty, in justice, 

2 



18 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

ought to be the same. Inebriety, gluttony, intem- 
perance in gratifying appetites and passions, are vio- 
lations of the commandments of our Creator ; and 
disobedience now and here, as in Eden, has the same 
penalty, — sickness, suffering, and ultimate death. 

We are not to forget that the penalty for wrong- 
doing is disciplinary, and has a tendency to lead or 
drive the sinner back to right-doing. The nausea 
that results from the use of alcohol or tobacco, and 
the headache and languor that follow gluttony, are 
warnings not thus to sin again. When a traveller 
gets out of the smooth and pleasant highway of right, 
the obstacles he meets, and the discomforts he finds, 
soon urge him to go back to the easy path of virtue. 
In every instance the amount and bitterness of the 
penalty are in exact proportion to the magnitude of 
the transgression and the frequenc}' of its repetition. 
This is just, and beneficial to the doer of evil. 

The first pair of human beings, unskilled in the use 
of reason, and estimating the nature and value of 
everything by its outward appearance, soon after the 
beginning of their lives, probably did something 
wrong. This cannot be doubted. Nothing short of 
a miracle, nothing but the constant intervention of 
Divine Providence, could have prevented it. Imme- 
diately after this first sin, by the eternal laws of cause 
and effect, came the penalty, the result. What was 
it? Can it be possible that for this one apparently 
slight offence their Father doomed them, and all their 



FIRST WARNING. 19 

posterity, to " death physical, spiritual, and eter- 
nal " ? Can any possible stretch of imagination in 
any one enable him to see in such a penalt} T for such 
an offence anything just or good? Do not the love 
and mercy of God, and the sense of honor and right 
in man, repudiate the idea? 

Furthermore, if such was to be the terrible penalty, 
humanity suggests that it should have been stated 
to our innocent, inexperienced, unsuspecting ances- 
tors with unmistakable clearness, and impressed on 
their minds by frequent repetitions. If an average 
man of our culture had been present, and foreknown 
the dire results of disobedience, he would have said 
to Adam and Eve, in earnest, pleading tones: U I 
beseech you, do not eat, do not touch, the forbidden 
fruit, — for if you do, }'ou will not only die, but }'ou 
and all 3-011 r posterity, awhile after death, will come 
to life again, and be thrust down into a horrible place 
prepared for torture ; and there millions of them will 
be tormented, clay and night, for ever and ever. Do 
not go near that terrible tree." Their Father, the 
merciful God, was present, and knew all the results 
of transgression ; yet He only said, and so far as we 
know said only once, " In the day thou eatest of it, 
thou shalt surery die." No hint was given of a life 
after death, or of an} 7 lengthy misery, or of any effect 
the act might have on posterity. The only conclu- 
sion possible to a candid mind is, that God meant 
just what He said, — no more, no less ; and the sup- 



20 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

position that the penalty was to be endless agony is an 
awful mistake. Bat if God did mean eternal misery, 
it is almost certain that Adam and Eve could not 
have comprehended His meaning. The}' had no con- 
ception of eternity, no distinct idea of acute suffer- 
ing, no belief in a burning hell ; and the warning did 
not imply anything of the kind. Evidently the}' 
sinned without anticipating any very bitter or lasting 
evil. But what their Father did say, they could and 
did understand. Death had been a common event 
long before the creation of man. They had seen 
many a leaf, insect, bird, and animal die and return 
to dust ; and the dissolution seemed pitiful and aw- 
ful. Instinctively they desired to live and enjoy the 
pleasures of life. No immediate dissolution seemed 
pending (the warning, in Hebrew, signifies only a 
beginning to die), the ultimate end seemed far away, 
and in a moment of excited emotion they yielded. 
These are the plain facts in the case. 

The pair in Eden disobeyed, just as people now 
sin, because they were strongly tempted, and at the 
moment lacked the moral courage and will to resist. 
The tree was handsome, and its fruit inviting. Its 
significant name, " knowledge of good and evil," 
drew them to its cool shade. They saw an animal 
feeding on its fruit with impunity. It did not harm 
the serpent ; why should it injure them ? Its panto- 
mimic expression was persuasive and forcible : and, 
either forgetting the warning or willing to take the 



FIRST WARNING. 21 

risk of disobedience, they plucked and ate. Pres- 
ently the unwholesome juice gave them new sensa- 
tions ; new thoughts came ; they saw in a new light ; 
and either from cold or a new perception of modesty, 
realized that they were naked. The result soon 
began to be manifest. They were inoculated with 
disease from which they never fully recovered. In 
the day they began to eat, the}' began to die ; and 
after a few hundred years of suffering, their bodies 
returned to dust. The taint of disease was be- 
queathed to all their posterity, and " in Adam all 
die." This is the simple story of the first trans- 
gression, as recorded in Genesis ; and it contains no 
hint of endless perdition. 

But, a very long time after the Eden affair, a new 
meaning was given to, or seen in, the word death, — 
namely, moral degradation with its inevitable evils. 
All these evils are involved in sin. Hence it is writ- 
ten : (Ezek. xviii. 4) " The soul that sinneth, it shall 
die ; " (Rom. vi. 23) " The wages of sin is death ; " 
(Rom. viii. 6) " To be carnally minded is death;" 
(Eph. ii. 1) " You hath he quickened, who were dead 
in trespasses and sins ; " (1 John iii. 14) "We know 
that we have passed from death unto life, because 
we love the brethren : he that loveth not his brother, 
abide th in death." This kind of death was one of 
the results of the first transgression, and it occurred 
on the very day they ate the forbidden fruit. By 
eating, they disobeyed God, ceased to be innocent, 



22 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

and morally died. But we are not compelled to 
infer that this moral change was the beginning of 
a never-ending curse. The truth is, man was 
designedly created frail, ignorant, and liable to 
3'ielcl to temptations. He was surrounded by mys- 
teries and dangers : mistakes, transgressions of law, 
were inevitable. There was not the shadow of a 
probability that he would not sin. It was merely 
a question of time ; and the theor}- that for this 
one little misdeed Adam and all his posteritj- were 
doomed to unending suffering seems unreasonable, 
an outrage of justice, fiendish, false. We cannot 
believe that God set such a horrible trap, and baited 
it with fruit so tempting. 

Some critics incline to the opinion that the story 
of Eden is a myth or an allegory ; and it may be 
admitted that some of its details have a mystical 
complexion, but it is evident that the account has a 
fact foundation. There must have been a first hu- 
man pair ; they must have been destitute of raiment, 
and must have dwelt in a grove of fruit trees from 
which they could obtain food. The fruit of some 
plants was not wholesome, was poisonous. By 
chance there grew in the midst of the grove a deadly 
Japan Upas ; and the new pair must have been 
entirely ignorant of its nature, and the effect of its 
fruit on the human system. But something that the 
scientist might call instinct, that a Christian might 
call the Holy Spirit, and that Moses called (and 



FIRST WARNING. 23 

rightly called) God, forbade their eating its baneful 
fruit. The language of the Hebrew text does not 
require us to believe there was any audible voice. 
Some kind of animal or insect feeds on each tree and 
plant ; for what is poison to one is wholesome to an- 
other. On or by the Upas Adam and Eve saw an 
animal eating its fruit with impunity. The actions of 
the animal seemed to prove that the fruit was good ; 
and thus enticed and deceived, unmindful of their 
instinctive repugnance, they also ate of its fruit. 
But it made them sick, and opened their mental 
eyes to the fact that some things were good and 
some evil. In their distress, God, in the awful 
majesty of their awakened consciences, reproved 
them, and hinted other evils that might ensue. A 
sense of responsibility and duty began to be felt ; 
and then and there commenced man's sad yet sub- 
lime career as a moral agent. Eden vanished, 
and the} r found themselves in a world of labor and 
care. 

But this first disobedience, misstep, mistake, was 
not wholly a disaster ; for good came as well as evil. 
It was as a fountain from which flowed many a pure 
river of life. It aroused the noble spirit of inquiry, 
investigation, research, and prompted the constant 
questions, What is this, that, and the other? What 
is the nature, use, and power of each? How are 
they related to man and man's interests? These 
inquiries have led to all the splendid achievements 



o 



4 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



of science, and to an intimate acquaintance with 
Nature in all her moods, from the generation of 
mosses and insects up to the evolution of planets, 
and the laws that govern the stars. The seemingly 
terrible lapse from innocence suggested watchful- 
ness, invention, industry, and economy. Xoxious 
plants were to be destroj'ed ; food-bearing vegetables 
cultivated, storehouses built, garments made ; and 
busy thrift was to displace primitive idleness. Our 
wheat-fields, cloth-factories, ships, railways, are the 
outgrowth of making leaf aprons in Eden, and 
seeking good food. It also brought into play a 
sj'mpathy, a tenderness, that otherwise would have 
remained dormant. Adam and Eve never realized 
how much each was to the other — how each loved 
the other — until each saw tears in the other's eyes. 
Then began the culture of the finer feelings and the 
nobler nature of man and woman, and that heroic 
self-denial and self-sacrifice that culminated in the 
death of Jesus, and made the cross the symbol of all 
that is truly great and good. In that hour, also, 
hope came in the thought that though Eve was weak 
and did wrong, her posterity, taught and warned 
by her misfortune, would do better and better, until 
"the seed of the woman should bruise [crush] the 
serpent's head," — a hope that has grown so large 
and bright that many a brave and loving soul in our 
day dares to believe in "the final restitution of all 
things." In fact, we can call to mind scarcely a 



FIRST WARNING. 25 

single blessing now enjoyed on earth, that has not 
directly or indirectly come from that ominous hour 
of temptation, sin, shame, penitence, promise, and 
right resolution. Man, not God, made a mistake ; 
and He has overruled it for good. 

Taking this view of what is called the Fall of man, 
we have no heart to denounce sweet mother Eve or 
dear father Adam. True, they lost their delightful 
Eden ; but better Edens are our inheritance. The 
cultivated and beautified earth ; and our pleasant 
and comfortable homes are superior to the ancient 
forest garden ; and we are not unlike our first par- 
ents in many respects. Each of us began life as 
an Adam or Eve, innocent, but weak and ignorant. 
For each of us there was in store duties and re- 
sponsibilities, — dangers to shun, and good to gain. 
In 3'outh we were advised, warned, threatened ; but 
each one of us was tempted, and each in some sinis- 
ter way yielded and did wrong, — ate or drank or 
indulged in something pernicious, and began to die. 
Many thousand people die every month because of 
wrong eating or drinking. He who would attain 
a long life, and be prosperous and happy, should 
abstain from all forbidden fruits and deeds. Con- 
forming to the eternal laws of right is equivalent to 
both serving God and taking care of ourselves. In- 
temperance in parents taints their offspring. Yet 
in the darkest hour the penitent seeker may find 
some hope of a better future, here or hereafter. 



26 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Taking all these things into consideration, we are 
compelled to conclude that the first warning does 
not refer to any after-death results, but only to the 
vast earthly consequences of man's beginning to 
learn good and evil. 

And, finding in this first proof-text no threat or 
intimation of eternal damnation, we are encouraged 
to hope that the Bible does not reveal such a doom 
for any sinner. One shadow has vanished. 



FORSAKEN OF GOD. 27 



IV. 

FORSAKEN OF GOD. 

"And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man" 
— Gen. vi. 3. 

n^HESE words were spoken concerning the very 
wicked people who lived before the Deluge, and 
their import is ominous. The Divine Spirit had long 
striven to reform and save these very wicked men. 
Through conscience, by impression and intuition, by 
appeals to their innate sense of honor and right, and 
by temporal chastisements, it had endeavored to win 
them to virtue, but in vain. Wrong was still the 
rule. Noah had preached righteousness to them, 
but his sermons were unavailing. Their wickedness 
was so great that ; ' eveiy imagination of their hearts 
was evil." Their reformation was hopeless, and a 
crisis was inevitable. God saw it, and said, " My 
spirit shall not always strive with man ; " in other 
words, " The present condition of affairs — the plead- 
ing of my pitying spirit with their rebellious spirits — 
shall cease." This sounds like the solemn announce- 
ment of a hopeless doom. Those from whom the 
love and care of God are withdrawn must sink down 
into the lowest state of sin and sorrow. Probably some 



28 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

people at the present day are as sinful and de- 
graded as were the antediluvians, and hence their 
fate must be as terrible. The cannibal savages of 
Africa, as described by Stanley, seem to be as far 
down in the scale of degradation as human beings 
can go ; and, taking into the account the Gospel 
light that shines in our country, some in our midst 
are as guilty as the sooty sons of the " dark con- 
tinent ; " and if God-forsaken, they must go down 
with the ancient sinners with whom the Divine Spirit 
ceased to strive. But before consigning them to 
hopeless perdition, let us very carefully study what 
God said, and the occasion on which it was spoken, 
that, if possible, we may find some reason to hope 
for their ultimate salvation. 

The statement of the Lord was this : " My spirit 
shall not always strive with man, for that he also is 
flesh : yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty 
years." This was said in an age when the average 
length of human life was more than nine hundred 
years. Some critics are of the opinion that the Lord 
meant that He would not permit people to live and 
sin so long, but would contract the average length 
of human life to one hundred and twenty years. If 
this opinion is correct, the passage does not refer to 
anything beyond the grave, or to anybody since the 
age of our long-living ancestors. 

But it may be asked, Did the antediluvians 
actually live nearly a thousand years? The Bible 



FORSAKEN OF GOD, 29 

affirms that they did, and the writer of Genesis 
undoubtedly had a tradition or a revelation to that 
effect. Yet in the minds of some men in our day 
there are grave doubts on this subject. They say 
that in those primitive times the people were liable to 
err in dates and numbers. Their j-ear may not 
have been of the same length as our year ; and what 
they called a hundred may not have been what we 
call a hundred. Besides, for a people ignorant of 
writing, it must have been difficult to preserve in 
memory the date of birth or the lapse of years. At 
the present time, in our own land, there is man}' an 
illiterate Indian and Negro who does not know his 
own age ; and very likely many of the people before 
the Flood did not know theirs. Further, learned 
physiologists tell us that the average human body 
will actually w r ear out in about two centuries, and 
that then death must ensue. If this is true, the 
stories of ancient extreme longevity are fictions. 
Finally, it is not easy to imagine any need, use, or 
benefit of a life protracted beyond a centur} 7 ; and 
what is useless, God does not permit. 

But in opposition to all this, it maj r be urged that 
the first inhabitants of the earth were not tainted 
with hereditary disease ; that they ate simple, 
healthy food ; that they lived out-of-doors, and 
breathed pure air ; that they did not exhaust them- 
selves by excessive labor or anxiety ; and hence 
they must have attained a great age. In our de- 



30 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

generate times there are quite a' number of cen- 
tenarians, and in primitive times a longer lease 
of life is certainly probable. In a book published 
some thirty years ago, by Fowler & Wells, entitled 
" Hydropathy for the People," there is (pp. 43-46) 
a long list of persons remarkable for longevity. It 
is there stated that Galen lived 140 years ; Thomas 
Parr, 152 ; Petrarch Caston, 185 ; Thomas Cam, 
207 ; and Numas de Cugna, 307. If these figures 
are correct — and they seem well authenticated — the 
extreme longevity of the people before the Flood is 
not only possible but probable. Admit this, and a 
literal interpretation of the passage under review is 
easy and satisfactory. "And the Lord said, My 
spirit shall not strive with man so long. He shall 
not sin eight or nine centuries ; his average length 
of life shall be cut down to an hundred and twent}' 
years." In accordance with this decision, the aver- 
age length of life began to diminish, and continued 
to diminish until the time of King David, when it 
w T as only about seventy years. The natural causes 
of this shortening of life were intemperance, crime, 
and the general degradation of the people. In this 
view of the case the text does not refer to any 
thing or condition after death ; the shortening of the 
earth life is all that was intended. 

This is one interpretation ; learned men have an- 
other and perhaps a better theory. The Divine an- 
nouncement was made a little more than a century 



FORSAKEN OF GOD. 31 

before the Flood. At that time the human race was 
so desperately wicked as to be unfit to live. It mer- 
ited destruction, and was ripe for doom. But the 
Lord, in His great mercy, in effect said : u This can- 
not be permitted to continue forever, but I will grant 
man an hundred and twenty years more in which to 
repent and reform." The allotted time elapsed ; the 
people grew worse and worse ; and then the Flood 
came and swept them all away. If this interpreta- 
tion is correct, the Lord did not allude to a shorten- 
ing of average human life, but to the number of years 
that would elapse before the great Deluge. 

But it may be asked, Do the facts warrant this 
conclusion ? Was there in ancient time a world-wide, 
destructive deluge ? It seems to us there are many 
good reasons for answering these questions in the 
affirmative : (1) The Bible says there was such a 
flood ; and the Bible is an ancient and reliable book. 
(2) The old but recently discovered Assyrian tablets, 
written without any knowledge of Moses or Hebrew 
tradition, give a full description of such a flood. (3) 
All the great nations of antiquity had distinct tra- 
ditions of such a flood, and these many apparently 
independent traditions must have originated in some 
actual occurrence. (4) A submersion of a large area 
of territory, of perhaps all the then inhabited earth, 
may be accounted for on geological principles, — the 
depression of the land and the inrush of ocean wa- 
ter. It is said there is positive proof that the island 



32 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

of Great Britain has thus been depressed, flooded, 
and then elevated, several times {vide Huxley's 
lecture on " A Piece of Chalk "). (5) The marine 
shells frequently found on the summits of lofty moun- 
tains indicate that whole continents were once cov- 
ered with salt water. (6) The testimony of the smooth 
rounded rocks seen on every side is clear and conclu- 
sive. God did not make the countless millions of 
pebbles on the earth ; each one of them is a chip 
from some old ledge, worn smooth and round in mov- 
ing water. All land containing them was once and 
for a long time under water. This is the affirmation 
of all scientists. Where we now are, waves once 
rolled, and fish once swam. (7) There have probably 
been several floods ; but each one was a local affair, 
because there is not water enough on earth to sub- 
merge all the land at once. Noah's Flood was a local 
affair ; but it was a real, terribly destructive deluge. 
At the present time a large portion of the Sahara 
and of the territory around the Dead Sea and the 
Caspian Sea is below the ocean level ; and if a free 
communication were opened by an earthquake or 
otherwise, we should have a modern Flood. 

The Noachian Deluge w r as real ; but there is no 
necessit}' for our supposing that those who handed 
down the story to Moses were thoroughly versed in 
geology or natural history. Their all was not com- 
mensurate with the all of modern scientists, but much 
less, much smaller. Nothing is too hard or difficult 



FORSAKEN OF GOD. 33 

for the miracle-working power of God ; and it is cer- 
tain that without superhuman assistance Noah and 
his probablj* unskilled workmen could not have built 
a vessel large enough and strong enough to accom- 
modate all the land animals of earth, with food 
enough to sustain them a year. Nor. supposing the 
ark built and ready for her voyage, could Noah and 
his three sons, without Divine aid, have gathered and 
shipped all the beasts, birds, reptiles, and insects, 
and for twelve months kept them from dying for want 
of food, drink, pure air, and cleanliness. And after 
the ark grounded on the cold peak of Mount Ara- 
rat, nothing but a stupendous miracle could have got 
them all safely down the steep slope of the mountain 
and away to the homes adapted to their natures. 
We are reluctant to believe in so mam' and so strange 
miracles performed to avoid the simple re-creation of 
animals. But if we adopt the theory that Noah's 
Flood was a local affair, submerging only a few hun- 
dred thousand square miles of territory, and drown- 
ing only such animals as dwelt within this area, 
all difficulties vanish ; we can accept the Mosaic 
narrative as in the main correct, and believe that 
about a hundred and twenty years after the an- 
nouncement was made, the sustaining influence of 
the Divine Spirit was withdrawn, and the sinful 
race of men perished. Admit this interpretation, 
and the passage contains no allusion to the realm 
of the dead. 

3 



Qi THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

There is still another theory which, ignoring all 
controversy about the Flood and primitive longevity, 
finds even in this text a gleam of hope for all sinners. 
All men have sinned, and God would have them all 
come to Him and be saved ; and, to secure the grati- 
fication of His desire, His Spirit strives to reform 
them. With God, to try is to succeed. Man can 
convert and save some sinners ; the Almighty can 
convert and save all. The inference is plausible that 
He will overcome all opposition, and the striving of 
His Spirit culminate in the holiness and happiness of 
all souls. In fact, admit the premises, and no other 
conclusion is possible. What He tries to do, He will 
do ; for nothing can counteract the Almighty. 

But the soundness of the premises is very doubt- 
ful. God is infinite ; man is finite, small, and weak ; 
and the idea of a strife, a struggle, between the two 
is utterly absurd. Compared with Deit}-, man is a 
mere infinitesimal mite that cannot present the least 
resistance to the mighty current of the Divine will. 
If God has the smallest desire to reform and save 
a sinner, that sinner's reformation and salvation is 
absolutely certain. He who by a word can create a 
world, never strives with man or anything. But the 
laws, tendencies, influences, ordained by the Creator 
do strive to keep man in the right ; and these he can 
resist, though in the long run they overpower him 
and make him conform to their regulations. They 
urge man to be temperate ; and if they cannot 



FORSAKEN OF GOD. 35 

conquer in an}- other way, they will sober him in 
the grave. 

The Rev. Dr. Hedge, of Harvard College, thinks 
the text should be rendered, "My spirit shall not 
alwa}'s remain in man." If this is correct, the idea 
of striving, struggling, vanishes. It is the Divine 
Spirit, or influence, that sustains life. When that is 
withdrawn, death ensues. This withdrawing may 
take place in age, in sickness, or by violence, — 
drowning, for example. " My spirit shall not al- 
ways remain in man ; " the Flood shall come, and 
the spirit in man shall return to God who gave it. 
This seems to us a very reasonable and satisfac- 
tory interpretation. 

But admit as correct the theory that God's Spirit, 
after striving with sinners long enough to find that 
they are incorrigible and irreclaimable, retires and 
leaves them to sink down in ruin and woe unending, 
yet this theory has no support in the text, because 
olam, the Hebrew word translated always, does not 
necessarily indicate endless duration. It and its 
Greek equivalent, aionios, are the only words in the 
Bible that designate the length of retribution ; and 
all good scholars are agreed that they may mean 
a limited period of time, long or short; Scripture 
usage also sustains this view. 

The Aaronic priesthood and the Jewish possession 
of Canaan were to be olam, everlasting ; but they 
ended long ago. By a special statute of the Mosaic 



36 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Code (Exod. xxi. 6), it was ordained that under cer- 
tain circumstances a servant should serve his master 
olam, forever, — that is, dining the remainder of his 
life. In speaking of his confinement in the whale, 
Jonah (ii. 6) says, " The earth with her bars was 
about me olam, forever ;" yet it was only three days. 
In these and many other passages, olam clearly 
means a period of limited duration. In more than 
fifty places in the Pentateuch alone, the word is used 
to describe things that long ago came to an end. 
The Jews made use of the phrase " olam and be- 
yond," though there can be nothing beyond eternity, 
Olam is also found in the plural, olamin : but there 
can be but one eternity. It is evident that olam 
does not necessarily denote endlessness. In the 
text under consideration, olam is very properly ren- 
dered always: " My spirit shall not always (much 
longer) strive with man. A deluge shall come, and 
the striving end in the death of the race." 

If the solemn announcement "My spirit shall not 
always strive with man " does allude to the after- 
death condition of sinful souls, we are at liberty to 
suppose that it means annihilation instead of suffer- 
ing. But there is not a hint of either ; the sole 
thought expressed is that the Divine Spirit will 
cease to strive with man. The passage does not 
teach the ultimate loss of any soul, but it contains 
a valuable moral lesson. To every human being 
there comes at times the "still, small voice" of God, 



FORSAKEN OF GOD. 37 

beseeching hini to do right. If he heeds it, bless- 
ings come ; if he disregards it, a flood of afflictions 
come. Only the wicked are drowned ; righteous 
Noah is safe. The ark is made of truth, love, and 
virtue ; it is large enough to accommodate all human 
beings, and float them all to heaven. 



38 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



Y. 

THE ANGRY GOD. 

" God is angry with the wicked every day." — Ps. vii. 11. 

n^HIS, if literally true, is the most alarming state- 
ment in the Bible, and the most awful fact in 
the universe. We know what anger is, and how it 
operates. We have felt its malign influence in our 
own souls, and seen the manifestations of its pres- 
ence in others. We know that it suggests revenge, 
desires the punishment of an enemy, and enjoys the 
agony of the guilty. It dethrones reason, forgets 
mere}', and deals in hard blows. If, in this sense 
of anger (and we can imagine no other), God is 
realty angry with the wicked, their doom to the 
worst possible fate seems inevitable ; and not only 
they, but we and all men, — for all have sinned. 
When a man is angry with us, we realize that we 
are in danger ; if God is angry with us, the danger is 
infinitely greater : man could only kill us ; God could 
torment us after death and forever. Admit that lie 
indulges in anger, and that His anger is like ours, 
and there can be no hope for universal salvation ; 
even the best of Christians would often have painful 
doubts of their own safety. 



THE ANGRY GOD. 39 

The Bible plainly and solemnly affirms that God 
is angry every day, that sometimes His anger rises 
or deepens into wrath, and that the wrath ultimates 
in vengeance, 

" Red, unrestrained, vindictive, final, fierce." 

God says (Deut. xxxii. 22): "A fire is kindled 
in mine anger, and it shall burn to the lowest hell." 
The Scriptures speak of His anger as "fierce," 
of His wrath as "hot," of His fury as "great," 
and of His saying, " Vengeance is mine." In scores 
of passages these alarming descriptions of Deity 
are repeated. We accept and try to believe these 
strange statements ; but meditating upon them brings 
doubt, anxiety, and almost dislike of Gocl. Such a 
being we may fear, but not very warmly love. 

We find it difficult to imagine what has hap- 
pened or can happen to cause an infinite being to 
become angry. In frail, nervous man, anger springs 
from anno3'ance. When any one wantonly injures 
us, or a domestic animal will not obey us, or an in- 
sect stings us, or a pebble causes us to stumble, or 
the wind blows off our hats, or our cherished plans 
fail, we are foolishly prone to be angry. It is be- 
cause we are weak and our feelings not under con- 
trol. But can the great, wise, unchangeable God be 
annoyed? Do His worlds, works, or children get 
out of order, do wrong, and disturb His serenity? 
Do His wise plans ever come to nought? Do His 



40 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

earthly sons and daughters tease, worry, and pester 
Him? Did He not know how things would work, 
and what His children would do and become, before 
He created them? Has He tried experiments and 
failed to obtain the results desired? Has He ever 
been surprised, disappointed, wronged, or abused? 
If these questions are answered in the affirmative, 
there is cause for His anger ; but He is not a Su- 
preme Being, He is only a demi-god. But if they 
are answered in the negative, as it seems to us they 
must be, then what has excited His wrath we can- 
not conjecture. 

As;ain, in us annovance is the outcome of our lack 
of foresight, sound judgment, and will-power. A 
man builds a fence to protect his meadow ; hungry 
cattle break through and spoil his growing corn, and 
he is annoyed and angry. He erred in judgment ; 
the fence was a failure. A man puts a curb-bit in 
the mouth of his fiery horse, and goes to ride feeling 
safe \ but a rein breaks, the horse shies and over- 
turns the carriage. The rider is hurt, annoyed, 
angered ; but the accident was the result of his neg- 
lect to see that his harness was all right. The 
State enacts stringent laws against criminals, and 
provides severe penalties ; but crime continues, and 
the public is annoyed and made angry. The truth 
is, legislators have neither the wisdom nor the power 
to prevent criminality. Is God similarly deficient in 
strength and knowledge? Did He not foresee that 



THE ANGRY GOD. 41 

the serpent would tempt, and the woman yield? 
Did He not foreknow that the penal laws thundered 
from Mount Sinai would not restrain from iniquity the 
stiff-necked Jews, and keep them in the way of holi- 
ness? If He did not foresee and foreknow these 
things, we cannot call Him all- wise ; if He did fore- 
see and foreknow how frail and weak the human 
race would be, how easily tempted, how liable to 
yield, why did He not fashion man more strong, or 
leave fewer temptations, serpents, devils, in his 
way? These thoughts and questions will come, and 
they present us two alternatives, — either God is 
short-sighted, not very wise, not veiy good, and 
therefore angry when His poorly planned creation 
does not work as He expected ; or we must modify 
the meaning of the Divine anger. We prefer the 
latter alternative. Let God be esteemed as per- 
fect, though the esteem invalidate a few poor old 
Hebrew words. 

In man, anger is a species of insanhry. The an- 
gry man's head is not level. He does not rightly 
use his reason. He indulges in violence, regard- 
less of consequences, and harms his enemies, his 
friends, and himself. Is this God's stvle of anger? 
Does He curse, smite, and burn without reason, and 
regardless of results? We think not. It seems 
clear to our mind, that, being all- wise, His every act 
flows from pure reason and love, and is done for the 
best good of all. If so, anger in Him is not what 



42 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

we call anger ; or, in other words, He is not angry 
In any sense of that word known to us. 

The Infinite One by necessity is unchangeable. 
If angry at any one time, He always was and always 
will be angry. He does not flare up with passion, 
and then cool off, like a weak, passionate man, but 
retains the same serenity yesterday, torday, and 
forever. This is clearty taught by both revelation 
and reason. An angry person is unhappy : if God 
is angry every da}', He is unhappy every day ; if 
angry all the time, He is unhappy all the time, and 
deserves the sincere pity of all good beings, — though 
this thought is almost downright blasphemy, and 
we will try to banish it from our minds. 

Taking all these things into consideration, a right- 
minded man cannot possibly believe that God's an- 
ger has any resemblance to human anger ; in other 
words, we cannot believe He is ever angry in the 
sense in which we use that word. Instead, we are 
compelled to believe that the infinite and perfect 
Supreme Being is ever calm, ever satisfied, ever 
serenely happy. Evidently there is a monstrous 
mistake somewhere, which all wise men should be 
equally eager to discover and rectify ; and this we 
will now attempt. 

The writers of the Bible believed and taught that 
God rules the world and regulates all its affairs, — 
that He causes the earthquake, the lightning, and 
the hurricane; that He sends the sword, the pesti* 



THE ANGRY GOD. 43 

lence, the locusts, and the famine ; that He punishes 
the guilty and blesses the righteous ; — and they were 
right. The first cause inaugurates all results ; and 
the great First Cause we call God. He, directly or 
indirectly, causes all the events that transpire. But 
in trying to make the ignorant and un spiritual peo- 
ple of their times realize the Divine presence, su- 
premacy, and providence, the sacred writers were 
obliged to resort to anthropomorphism, to speak of 
God as an immense man. Accordingly the}' allude 
to His head, face, eyes, ears, mouth, and breath ; to 
His sitting on a throne ; to His going hither and 
thither, talking, laughing, mocking, and being angry, 
like an immense man. These bold figures of speech, 
not one of which is literally true, were employed to 
impress a great moral lesson on the Jews, to cause 
them to realize the presence of a Divine providence 
and to trust and obej- God. The strange anthropo- 
morphism was used to serve a good purpose. The 
later Prophets, though sometimes indulging in the 
old style, had higher and better views of Deity. 
Isaiah says (lv. 8, 9) : " My ways are not your ways, 
neither are your thoughts my thoughts, saith the 
Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the 
earth, so are my thoughts higher than your thoughts, 
and my ways than your ways." His anger, there- 
fore, is unlike ours. His way with sinners may be 
unlike our petulant, vindictive wa}\ Jesus said, 
" God is a spirit ; " St. John said, " God is love ; " 



44 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

St. Je.mes said, " With whom is no variableness, nei- 
ther shadow of turning." Scientific research confirms 
these statements. The thunder-storm is not an indi- 
cation of Divine wrath; it is a wholesome effort of 
nature to restore an electrical equilibrium. The 
terrible sword of the Civil War was not drawn b}' 
an offended Deit}' ; it was the result of an " irrepres- 
sible conflict " of opinion on the subject of slavery. 
Even the names of God — the Eternal, the Almighty, 
the Omniscient, the Omnipresent One — indicate an 
entire absence of anything like human feeling or pas- 
sion. In view of this fact we must interpret all the 
figurative language of the Bible, or be in danger of 
becoming infidels. In the light of this interpreta- 
tion; we should shape our conduct, not to please or 
displease the immovable Calm, but to conform to 
the eternal law of right; because in keeping this 
law "there is great reward." 

It may be asked, Why is not this interpreta- 
tion general^ adopted? Why do so many people 
still believe in an angry God? The answer is, 
that some people believe what the} T are taught, and 
neither dare nor care to question its correctness. 
Catholic laymen are taught to do this ; many Protes- 
tant laymen do it without being taught. Others 
believe God is literally angry, because they look at 
Him through sinful eyes. A criminal, it is said, 
fancies he hears the footfall of the pursuer in every 
unexpected sound, and catches sight of the avenger 



THE ANGRY GOD. 45 

in every unusual appearance. Our feelings are pro- 
jected upon everything around us. " Unto the pure 
all things are pure : but unto them that are defiled 
and unbelieving is nothing pure." On this principle, 
to the wicked God must seem to be angry. Hence 
millions on millions of the ungodly believe, and must 
believe, that His anger is literal and real ; and of 
them it may be said, " They believe a lie, that they 
may be damned." But the guilty, blind and fearful, 
are not competent rightly to interpret the dark say- 
ings in the Bible. We reject their fear-inspired 
notions, and are compelled to believe the testimony 
of the best thinkers and clearest seers. God is not, 
never was, never will be, angry as a petulant man is 
angry. His opposition to evil is not a temporary 
flash of passion, but the natural antagonism of 
right to wrong. In this antagonism we rejoice, and 
for it feel truly grateful. We love God all the more 
because He is hostile to sin, and, in figurative lan- 
guage, is angry with the wicked every clay. His 
anger is pure and good, and it must eventually 
subdue all evil. Let Thine anger, Thy hostility, 
continue, O Lord, until there is an entirely holy 
universe. 



46 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



VI. 

THE HOPELESS. 

" The wicked is driven away in his wickedness : but the righteous 
hath hope in his death." — Prov. xiv. 32. 

TN other words, the righteous, feeling at peace 
with God, are cheered by a hope of future safety, 
that ever comforts and sustains them. The wicked, 
b} T a sense of un worthiness and a fear of retribution, 
are deprived of hope, and rendered wretched. This 
absence of hope is alluded to in other passages 
of Scripture. The very sinful are " without God 
and without hope." If a small, weak hope should 
remain in their dark souls, it is frail "as a 
spider's web;" it shall be u broken, taken away, 
perish/* To the wicked, life has little joy, and 
death seems either a leap in the dark or a gateway 
to misery. This is the evident meaning of the 
proverb, and it suggests several serious and impor- 
tant considerations. 

The text is a specimen of the almost invariable 
manner in which the Bible classifies mankind. It 
often alludes to two opposite classes of people, not as 
the converted and the unconverted, nor as profes- 



THE HOPELESS. 47 

sors and non-professors, nor as church-members and 
worldlings, nor as evangelical and unev angelical, 
but as the righteous and the wicked, the doers of 
good and the doers of evil, the holy and the unholy, 
saints and sinners. The discrimination is not made 
between creeds, but deeds. In the great judgment 
described by the Master in Matt. xxv. 31-46, it is 
those w^ho have not done good that go away into 
everlasting punishment, while those who have done 
good enter into life eternal. We like this Bible 
fashion of putting things. It seems to us the right 
doctrine to preach to men, and the right way to 
teach children. " Do right, and it will be well with 
you ; do wrong, and evil will surely come. No 
escape is possible." 

The statement is but one of many in which 
the conditions and portions of the righteous and 
the wicked are set in sharp contrast. Invariably the 
righteous are praised, and promised the best things ; 
and the wicked are condemned, and threatened the 
worst things. Unless they repent, there are no 
precious promises for sinners ; and unless they fall 
from grace, no threatenings made to saints. And 
this way of contrasting the condition and fortunes 
of men is in accord with justice and the nature of 
the soul. Ages of human experience testify that 
"the wa}- of the transgressor is hard;" and that 
" indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish," 
are upon and in ' ; every soul of man that doeth evil." 



48 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

True, the wicked may acquire wealth, obtain office 
and high position, and indulge in sensuous luxuries ; 
but their capacity for pure and solid happiness is 
gone, and if they were to speak their real feel- 
ings they would say, "Vanity, vanity; all is van- 
ity and vexation of spirit." It is true also that 
the virtuous are liable to suffer losses and curses, 
injury and pain ; but they can still retain their self- 
respect, and rejoice in the hope of an end to ill, and 
an eternity of good. Anywhere and at any time it 
is safe to repeat the ancient advice: " Say ye to 
the righteous, that it shall be well with him ; . . . 
woe unto the wicked ! it shall be ill with him." 

The passage under consideration contains no allu- 
sion to a life after death. It is almost certain that 
its author had no idea of the immortality revealed by 
Jesus. The reference is entirely to affairs in this 
life. The predicates are in the present tense. The 
wicked is driven away ; the righteous hath hope. 
Whatever may be hereafter, the text limits our re- 
flections at this time to the here and now ; and this 
is always the main thing to be thought of and cared 
for. Make the present right, and the future may 
be safely intrusted to Him who liveth forever and 
doeth all things well. 

The wicked are driven away by whom or what? 
It may be of no consequence to them, but we cannot 
avoid the inquiry. Driving implies forcible com- 
pulsion ; what is the force, and what the instrument 



THE HOPELESS. 49 

or means employed? Is it muscular or mental, or 
both ? Is God the driver, or Christ, or who ? We 
would rather not think of the great God as concerned 
in any such petty business ; and the translation of 
Professor Noyes entirely relieves us of the thought : 
" By wickedness the wicked is thrust down, but the 
righteous hath hope even in death." Deity has no 
hand in the affair, and no driving is done. Wicked- 
ness is a weight; sin is a load, and Ht thrusts the 
sinner down. The sinking is not caused by the 
hand or will or wrath of any one ; it is the working 
of a law as old, as universal, and as unchanging as 
the law of gravity. It cannot be repealed or dodged. 
Down the wicked must go ; and every added sin 
sinks them lower. A hundred passages tell the same 
stor}\ " A guilty conscience needs no accuser ; " it 
decides its own case and condemns without a hear- 
ing. " Murder will out." The criminal feels that 
his crime is known at least to God, and he expects 
retribution. u The wicked flee when no man pur- 
sueth ; " but he cannot flee into safety, because he 
carries the avenger with him. By his wickedness 
he is driven away and thrust down. 

The special thing mentioned in the text is hope. 
This the righteous have ; from this the wicked are 
driven away. But the nature and power of hope are 
neither understood nor appreciated by the many. 
Hope is desire and expectation combined ; it is a 
pleasure and an influence united. For example, a 

4 



50 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

j T oung person desires love, a home, and prosperity; 
and if he or she is doing right, is kind, honest, in- 
dustrious, economical, there is good reason to expect 
that the desire will be satisfied. Thus is hope both 
the joy and the stimulus of all righteous young peo- 
ple. It inclines them to self-respect, prudence, and 
" patient continuance in well-doing." In clue time 
the sweet hope ripens into fruition ; and love, home, 
and competency are attained by them, and by no 
others. Then other hopes come to cheer and en- 
courage them, — hope for beautiful children, hope to 
win the respect and confidence of the community, to 
be useful in society, to help make the world better, 
to continue in prosperity, to grow old gracefully, 
and at last to depart in peace and rise to a higher 
realm. For the righteous, and the}' only, have hope 
even in death ; and to them_ alone are the eloquent 
lines of Campbell 1 applicable, — 

" Unfading hope, when life's last embers burn, 
And soul to soul and dust to dust return, 
Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour ; 
Oh, then thy kingdom comes, immortal power! 
What though each spark of earth-born rapture fly 
The quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye, 
Bright to the soul, thy seraph hands convey 
The morning beams of life's eternal day. 
Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin, 
And all the phoenix spirit burns within. 

1 Pleasures of Hope. 



THE HOPELESS. 51 

Oh, deep, enchanting prelude to repose ; 
The dawn of bliss, the twilight of our woes ! 
We almost hear the parting spirit sigh, 
It is a dread but glorious boon to die." 

To a person entirely destitute of hope, the future 
is all dark and gloomy. Such a person, having no 
desire or expectation of any good time coming, 
either in this world or the next, is in clanger of los- 
ing self-respect, becoming indifferent to the welfare 
of society, and sinking down into despair ; and this 
is as low as any soul can go. Ma}' the good Lord 
save us from hopelessness ! 

But, thanks to a kind Providence, the world 
abounds in hope. The glittering air-castles of the 
young and the dream}' are built by hope. The 
man}' millions of men and women who are patiently 
working, watching, waiting, and bearing the heavy 
burdens of poverty, disappointment, grief, or sick- 
ness, are sustained and cheered by hope. . In fact, 
the hope of attaining some good thing — a pleasant 
home, the fruition of love, recovery from illness, go- 
ing at last to heaven or Nirvana — is at times cher- 
ished and enjoyed by almost every human being. 
How can this be accounted for? Is righteousness 
abundant, or do the wdcked indulge in hope ? Some 
explanation is necessary. 

It is said in the Old Testament, and repeated in 
the New, that "there is none righteous; no, not 
one." If by the righteous are meant absolutely holy 



52 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

and perfect people, the statement is correct. Xo 
such saints, except perhaps Enoch and Elijah, exist, 
or ever existed, on the earth. Even the best of 
Christians, like Moses the man of God, sometimes 
get out of the right wa}' ; and in all probability 
there is no person that has not some good quality. 
The obvious inference is, therefore, that the words 
righteous and wicked, as used in Scripture, generally 
have a comparative meaning, and denote the better 
and the worse. Admit this, and all is clear. There 
are degrees in hope. The more righteous, the 
larger hope ; the more wicked, the less hope. Xo 
one is entirelv virtuous, and hence no one is free 
from anxiety ; no one is entirely vicious, and hence 
no one is entirelv destitute of hope. Xo one has 
more, no one less, than his moral condition merits. 
What the world, what each person, needs, is not 
more hope, but more righteousness. Attain the 
virtue, and the hope will come as a result. 

And the cheering fact should not be forgotten, 
that no person, however good or bad, is crystallized 
and incapable of change. It is possible for saints, 
and, according to Milton, even angels, to fall from 
grace, become sinners, and lose hope ; and for sin- 
ners, by their own efforts and Divine aid, to reform, 
become righteous, and attain a glorious hope. This 
is conversion ; and instances of it are not uncommon. 
Even the malefactor on the cross became so penitent 
that Jesus gave him hope by saying, " This day 



THE HOPELESS. 53 

shalt thou be with me in Paradise." Possibly some 
sinners are so vile and weak that unaided the}' can- 
not reform. Before the advent of Christ and the 
'promulgation of the Gospel, nearly all mankind were 
in this impotent condition, and multitudes still are. 
But "the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath 
appeared to all men ; " and it is not a mere gor- 
geous rainbow arching the sky, but a saving power. 
The goodness of God leadeth sinners to repentance ; 
and by this blessed means reformation is going on, 
little by little, everywhere, all the time ; and hence 
hope, the consequent of virtue, illumes the entire 
world. Truth, manifest goodness, and faith give 
birth to hope. 

During the Sepoy rebellion in India, some twent}'- 
five years ago, a detachment of the British army, led 
by General Havelock, forced its wa} T into the be- 
sieged city of Lucknow. The object was to relieve 
the imprisoned English garrison ; but instead, the 
enemy in countless numbers, commanded by the fero- 
cious Nana Sahib, whom Jules Verne rightly styles 
the " Demon of Cawnpore," closed in around the 
town, and shut off all communication with the out- 
side world. The new state of affairs was worse than 
the old, because there were more to feed and more 
to surfer. Escape was impossible, and to remain 
there long was to die of starvation. The siege 
continued through dreary weeks and months ; pro- 
visions grew fearfully scarce ; to escape the missiles 



54 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

of the foe, the garrison, was obliged to occupy un- 
derground apartments ; disease set in, deaths were 
frequent, and the situation was appalling. One 
slender hope remained. The} T kn£w that a true sol- 
dier never deserts or forgets his comrades, — knew 
that the noble Sir Colin Campbell, then Commander- 
in-Chief in India, would think of them, guess their 
condition, and if possible, hasten to their relief. But 
they also knew that he was far, far away, and that 
he might not be able to fight his way to Lueknow. 
Day after day, week after week, and month after 
month wearily wore away, and the close-pent suffer- 
ers sank deeper and deeper into despondency. 

At last, after man} T had died, and all the living 
were feeble, on the eighty-third day of the besiege- 
ment, a sharp-eared young Scotchwoman suddenly 
shouted, " They're coming; I can hear the slogan." 
The slogan is the battle-cry, the war-whoop, of 
Scotch soldiers, and General Campbell always had 
with him a detachment of Highlanders. Her com- 
panions sprang up and listened with bated breath, 
but not hearing anything, sank again into the silence 
of despair. They deemed her insane. But a minute 
after, with greater animation, she cried out again, 
" The Campbells are coming ; dinna ye hear the slo- 
gan?" The sounds were nearer; and soon others, 
and presently all, heard the joyous sounds of .shout- 
ing thousands, and the roar of battle. Their friends 
had indeed arrived ; and hope came like a flood of 



THE HOPELESS. 55 

glory. Weak as the}' were, the}- sprang op, em- 
braced each other, wept, laughed, and shouted. 
General Campbell, with a large arm}', was near them, 
was fighting for them, and they would soon be res- 
cued. The hope ended in fruition. In a few hours 
the siege was raised, and they were safe within the 
British lines. 

The entire human race was— and to a large extent 
still is — imprisoned in ignorance, " under chains of 
darkness," and perishing in the bondage of iniquity. 
Escape by self-effort was impossible. Long, dreary, 
painful, and hopeless was the inthralment. At 
length, forty centuries after this desperate state of 
affairs began, some listening Juchean shepherds in 
the pastures near Bethlehem heard the slogan of 
heaven, — the joyful shout of angels, — "Unto you 
is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, 
which is Christ the Lord" (Luke ii. 11). It was 
true ; redemption was at hand. The Captain of our 
salvation had arrived with a force sufficient to van- 
quish the foes of mankind and save the world. 
Yes, the Deliverer had come. He taught, wrought, 
suffered, died, rose, ascended to heaven. But this 
was not all ; his mission was not an episode in his- 
tory that soon ended. It was to be world-wide, and 
to last till the end of time. He vanished from mortal 
sight, but he left with his disciples a Gospel that 
is the " power of God unto salvation." For nearly 
nineteen hundred years this irresistible Gospel has 



56 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

been singing, shouting, glad tidings of great J03- 
to all people. It makes known Divine love and 
immortal life. It argues, pleads, and implores ; 
and it bends a bright bow of hope over every one 
that believeth. It assures sinners that the}' can 
become righteous, and be " delivered from the bon- 
dage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
sons of God." But what of the people who thronged 
the earth for four thousand years before the birth of 
Christ, and the millions and millions who have since 
lived and died in sin, without ever hearing a syllable 
of the Gospel? Sir Colin Campbell saved all he 
could, — saved all that were alive inLucknow; the 
dead w-ere beyond his reach. We suppose God will 
also save all He can. Are the dead beyond the 
reach of His mercy ? This is the question we are 
trying to answer ; and on it the passage under 
review throws no light. It was written long before 
the birth of the Saviour. 



SHEOL. 57 



VII. 

SHEOL. 

" The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that 
forget God:' — Ps. ix. 17. 

'HP WO things are manifest : first, there is a hell ; 
second, the wicked, and all the nations that for- 
get God, are turned (thrust down) into it. It has 
long been generally believed that hell is a place, 
and the most awful place in the universe ; and that 
being thrust into hell is the Divine punishment for 
sin, and the most horrible punishment that even God 
can inflict. We shudder at the bare thought of 
an} 7 soul being doomed to this realm of woe ; and 
in fear for ourselves and pity for others, we can- 
not refrain from asking, Is the common belief cor- 
rect? Is there no mistake about it? What and 
where is hell? It is certain that the space-pene- 
trating telescope has not brought it to view, and the 
miner's shaft has not reached it : and neither reason 
nor science can tell us anything about it. But we 
are not left in utter ignorance on the subject. The 
Bible contains reliable information concerning hell ; 
and if we study its sacred pages in a candid and 
scholarly manner, we may learn all we need to know 



58 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

respecting this terrible realm. The learned and 
orthodox Dr. Campbell said, "When we speak as 
Christians, we express by the word hell the place of 
punishment of the wicked after the general judg- 
ment." This definition of hell is quoted in Worces- 
ter's Quarto Dictionary ; and without doubt it is 
substantially correct. Now, what does the Bible 
say about this fearful place, how many times is it 
mentioned, and what was its Hebrew name? To 
these questions we can find explicit answers, and 
thus obtain a correct idea of the Bible doctrine 
of hell. 

The Old Testament was originally written in the 
Hebrew language ; and the only word in it that is, 
or can be, translated hell is Sheol. This word oc- 
curs sixty-five times : in thirty-one instances it is 
rendered hell ; in thirty-one, grave ; in three, pit. If 
this word actually does designate "the place of 
punishment of the wicked after the general judg- 
ment," it is very strange that King James's transla- 
tors, in a majority of texts, did not render it JtelL 
It shows that the}' had pretty strong doubts about 
its real meaning. As a matter of fact, the word 
has several shades of significance, and is used to 
denote different though related things as a careful 
investigation will show. 

In Gesenius's Hebrew Lexicon the primary mean- 
ing of SJieol is said to be "the under- world ; " but 
to realize the import of this definition, we must call 



SHEOL. 59 

to mind the ancient idea of the universe. Accord- 
ing to the Ptolemaic theor} T , the earth was the grand, 
immovable centre, and around it the sun, moon, and 
stars revolved. The flat surface of the earth divided 
all space into two parts or realms, the upper and the 
lower ; and by this division there were three locali- 
ties, — the region above, the surface of the earth, 
and the region below. The upper region, realm, or 
world was heaven, or the heavens. In the opinion 
of some people there were three heavens, one above 
another. The lowest heaven was the atmosphere in 
which the birds fly and the clouds float. Above 
this, and resting upon it, was the second heaven, — 
the pure blue sky in which the stellar spheres moved 
on in their lofty courses. Above the crystal arch of 
the sky, and resting on its transparent ceiling, was 
the third heaven, — the heaven of heavens ; the high 
and holy place, in which was the home, the throne, the 
court of God, and the abodes of the blessed immor- 
tals. Of course no one had a very definite idea of 
the heavens ; but something like this must have been 
the imaginary outline of the upper regions. It was 
this third heaven to which Saint Paul knew a man 
caught up, and in which he saw things that human 
language is not adequate to describe. It was this 
heaven that Stephen, the first martyr, saw opened, 
revealing Christ standing at the right hand of God. 
It was to this heaven that the angels went, after 
making known to the shepherds the birth of Jesus. 



60 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

And it was up to this heaven that dreaming Jacob 
saw the ladder reach, on which the angels descended 
and ascended. It was a pure, beautiful, glorious 
abode for God and His spiritual family to dwell in, 
but not for man. We can recall no passage in the 
Old Testament that intimates that any man ever 
prayed or expected to go up to this high heaven after 
death. The ancient Jews do not seem to have been 
cheered by even the faintest hope of a blessed 
immortality. If at death, as Solomon said, the 
spirit returns to God from whom it came, it was 
not as a person, but as an impersonal life or divine 
essence. 

In the under-world, the immense realm below the 
surface of the earth, the ancient Hebrews full}' be- 
lieved, though their idea of it was vague and indefi- 
nite. No human eye could see it, and no person 
had ever come from it to give a description of its 
characteristics. It seemed to be a vast, dark, silent, 
shadowy, lifeless realm, undescribecl because inde- 
scribable. This gloomy region the writers of the Old 
Testament called Sheol, a word signifying "the under- 
world ; " and Sheol appears to have been the only- 
suitable name which their language afforded. It 
was into Sheol that the wicked were turned, with 
all the nations that forget God. 

Sheol, however, like most substantives in all lan- 
guages, had a secondary meaning, — w ' the grave, the 
state or realm of the dead." And it very naturally 



SHEOL. 61 

attained this secondaiy sense. In Palestine, as in 
most other countries, the bodies of deceased persons 
were either buried or placed in natural or artificial 
caves, caverns, tombs. In either case the corpse, 
the dead person, was below the surface of the 
earth, and therefore in Sheol, the under- world. In 
itself, Sheol does not mean "grave;" but as the 
grave is in Sheol, it sometimes significantly took 
the name, — a part expressed by the whole. All the 
dead were, and all the living were soon to be, in 
the same lower realm, in Sheol. In thirt} T -one in- 
stances in the Old Testament the word is very 
properly rendered grave; and a similar rendering in 
other passages might give us a better idea of the 
original. 

All the dead were in Sheol, but none of them 
experienced pain or pleasure. Like shadows, they 
saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, thought, 
did nothing. Solomon said (Eccl. ix. 10) : u What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy 
might ; for there is no work or device or wisdom or 
knowledge in Sheol, whither thou goest." Perfect 
quiet, silence, and indifference reign supreme. Yet 
in one passage of Scripture, in the figurative lan- 
guage of poetry, a momentary shiver of animation 
is excited in the dead. When a mighty king of 
Babylon died and entered Sheol, the event was of 
such thrilling interest that it was reported (Isa. xiv. 
9, 10) : - 



62 THR UGH THE SHADO WS. 

" Sheol is in commotion on account of thee, 

To meet thee at thy coming; 

It stirreth up before thee the shades, all the mighty of 
the earth. 

It arouseth from their thrones all the kings of the 
nations. 

They all accost thee, and say, 

Art thou become weak as we ? 

Art thou become like us ? 

Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, 

And the sound of thy harps. 

Vermin have become thy couch, 

And earth-worms thy covering. 

How art thou fallen from heaven ! 

O Lucifer, son of the morning! 

How art thou cast down to the ground, 

Thou that didst trample on the nations! " * 

Of course this is not to be taken as a literal de- 
scription ; but it contains a glimpse of the ancient 
notions of Sheol. A great event stirs its weak and 
quiet ghosts into commotion, to sink again into 
their usual stupor, from which only a poet's pen can 
arouse them. 

Sheol being the home of the dead, dying was 
sometimes called " going down to Sheol." This, to 
an aged person burdened wdth decrepitude and un- 
able to enjoy the activities of life, was rather a 
pleasant prospect. It seemed like lying down in 
peace and lapsing into perfect repose. But to the 

1 Noyes's Translation. 



SHEOL. ' 63 

young, just beginning to taste the sweet joys of 
earth, to the middle-aged with life's work only half 
done, and even to the elderly whose minds were 
harassed by recollections of their evil deeds, dying — 
going to Sheol — appeared to be the worst of all 
calamities, the very king of terrors. The patri- 
arch Jacob, believing his clear son Joseph had been 
slain by ferocious beasts, said (Gen. xxxvii. 35), 
"I shall go down to Sheol, to my son, mourning." 
The idea is, the darling son is in Sheol, and grief 
for his earl}' death will bring the father down to the 
same joyless realm. In itself death was not an evil, 
but the circumstances attending death were, in this 
and man}' another case, very melancholy. This is 
the first passage in the Bible in which Sheol is men- 
tioned ; and it certainty does not here mean " the 
place of punishment of the wicked after the final judg- 
ment." Instead, it means, as it is rendered, "the 
grave." Similar language is employed in speaking 
of the possible death of Benjamin, the other son of 
beloved Eachel. When his other sons insisted on 
taking Benjamin with them to Egypt, Jacob said to 
them (Gen. xlii. 38), " If any mischief befall him 
by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring my 
gra\' hairs with sorrow to Sheol ! " In other words, 
the death of the son would be a fatal blow to the 
father ; he would die of grief. Not death, but an 
untimely death, is the sad event anticipated. And 
this thought throws light on the statement of the 



64 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Psalmist: " The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, 
and all the nations that forget God." The sinful 
shall not live to ripe longevity, and depart in peace ; 
he shall die untimely and perhaps by violence. The 
same destiny awaits ungody nations ; they are swept 
into the gulf of ruin, and disappear. It is the law of 
God and the order of nature, that sin should shorten 
life. 

Sheol appears to have had still another meaning. 
In the sense of " grave," Sheol being a realm of 
darkness, joylessness, and foul corruption, the word 
was sometimes and very naturally used to designate 
a miserable condition. Hence Jonah (ii. 2) calls 
the stomach of the fish in which he was so miserably 
imprisoned, u the belly of Sheol." On one occasion, 
when in great affliction, King David said (Ps. cxvi. 
3), " The sorrows of death compassed me, and the 
pains of Sheol gat hold upon me : I found sorrow 
and trouble." He felt as badly as a dying man. 
Again, alluding probably to the same depressed con- 
dition, he says (Ps. lxxxvi. 13), " Thou hast de- 
livered my soul from the lowest Sheol," and this, too, 
before his death. It was not a place, but a condition, 
from which he was delivered. In speaking of the 
debasing influence of the "strange woman," it is 
said (Prov. ix. 18), " Her guests are in the depths 
of Sheol," — as low as men can be. 

These are the three meanings of the word Sheol : 
(1) The under-world ; (2) The grave or realm of the 



SHEOL. 65 

dead ; (3) The miserable condition of a wicked per- 
son in the present life. The name may have had 
some other shade of figurative sense ; but as the 
writers of the Old Testament had apparently no 
faith in human immortality, they could not and did 
not speak of Sheol as " the place of punishment of 
the wicked after the general judgment." They 
knew of no such place, and hence they had no name 
for such a place. The general opinion, or rather 
feeling of the ancient Jews w r as without doubt 
accurately expressed in Job vii. 9 : " As the cloud 
is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth 
down to Sheol shall come up no more." Death was 
the finality ; there was nothing beyond. But what- 
ever Sheol was, it was or is to be put out of exist- 
ence. God is reported to have said through the 
pen of Hosea (xiii. 14), "O Sheol, I will be thy 
destruction." This ends the thing, and exhausts the 
subject. There is no word in the Hebrew Old 
Testament that means hell as a place of torment 
after the general judgment. It is true the word 
hell occurs thirteen times in the revised Old 
Testament. The reason given by the revisers for 
retaining the ugly word is that its meaning is so 
obvious that it can lead to no misunderstanding. 
For example, (Jonah ii. 2) " Out of the belly of hell, 
cried I." No one can suppose that this means any- 
thing but the belly of the u great fish." So in Isa. 
xiv. 9, " Hell from beneath is moved to meet thee 

5 



66 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

at thy coming," the language is so manifestly figur- 
ative that no one can be misled. The truth is, the 
ripest scholarship of the nineteenth century blots 
from the Old Testament the idea of hell as a place 
of torment. 

In God's dealings with the chosen people in an- 
cient times, the policy of retribution was in full 
operation. Great and precious promises were made 
to the righteous, and terrible punishments were 
threatened for the wicked ; but both the rewards 
and the chastisements were earthly and temporal. 
The blessings for virtue were peace and prosperity, 
health and longevity, a good name and true friends, 
and in time of trouble, the presence and assistance 
of the Lord. The penalties for persistent sin were 
the withdrawal of these favors, and the infliction of 
famine, pestilence, war, defeat, captivity ^ and bond- 
age in a foreign land. All these are mentioned many 
times in the Old Testament ; but it does not contain 
a single distinct enunciation of joj's or sorrows after 
death, for the righteous or the wicked. The results 
of this policy are related in the melancholy pages of 
Jewish history ; and that this was the stern policy 
of the Jewish dispensation, no candid reader of the 
Bible can doubt. No Sheol punishment is hinted at, 
except, if at all, as an affair of the present life. 

This is a significant, a remarkable, fact ; and in 
view of it an honest man can hardly refrain from 
inquiring : If there is a place for the punishment of 



SHEOL. 67 

the wicked after the general judgment, from which 
there is no escape possible, and if the large majority 
of mankind — the wicked and all the nations that for- 
get God — were ever in imminent danger of being 
thrust into the fearful place, and if any amount of 
warning to flee from the wrath to come could have 
availed to iiiduce some, even though a few, to repent 
and escape, why were not the Hebrew prophets in- 
spired frequently to mention the awful place, and 
plainly depict its eternal anguish? Why did our 
Father maintain entire reticence on this all-important 
subject for four thousand years, and thus permit 
hundreds of millions of His children, whom a timely 
warning might have frightened into obedience, to 
sin away the last day of grace and sink to ever- 
lasting woe? Only one plausible answer can be 
given : There is no place for the punishment of the 
wicked after their death, and there is no endless 
perdition in store for any soul. We distinctly warn 
our children of eveiy danger to which the}- are ex- 
posed ; and God is better than we. He has, even in 
the Old Testament. 



68 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



VIII 

HADES. 

" In hell [Hades] he lifted up his eyes, being in torment" — 
Luke xvi. 23. 

TRAILING to find in the Old Testament any name 
for the place "of punishment of the wicked 
after the general judgment," we turn to the New. 
As has already been shown, Sheol, the only Hebrew 
word ever rendered hell, signifies (1) the under- 
world, all the space below the surface of the earth ; 
(2) the grave, — the quiet, silent, painless, joyless 
resting-place of the dead ; and (3) a miserable con- 
dition of the body or mind. Finding, further, that 
no inspired writer, from Moses to Malachi, gives an}' 
assurance that any person will go to heaven after 
death, and that the only inference to be deduced 
from the Prophets is that all persons must at last 
descend into the peace and rest of Sheol, — we go to 
the New Testament for more light. 

In the interval of time between the age of Mala- 
chi and the age of Matthew, the Jewish nation ex- 
perienced sad reverses and great changes. It had 
been ruled by Persia, Greece, and Home, and had 



HADES. 69 

learned something of the religion, theology, mythol- 
ogy, and philosophy of each of these nations. It 
had felt the thrill of that awaking age that gave to 
the world Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, and 
Aristotle ; and its people had learned to read, speak, 
and write the copious and beautiful Greek language ; 
above all, it had been blessed hy the advent of the 
world's Eecleemer. Of course, we may expect to find 
in the Christian Scriptures some things not taught 
in the Jewish. What, then, is the New Testament 
doctrine of hell? What is its name in Greek, where 
is it located, and what are its characteristics ? 

The New Testament was originally written in the 
Greek language, and in its text there are three words 
translated hell in our English version, — Gehenna, 
occurring twelve times ; Hades, eleven times ; and 
Tartarus, once : in all, twenty-four times. These 
are the only words in the Greek New Testament 
that are or can be rendered hell. Three different 
names are certainly enough to designate any one 
place ; but it is passing strange that in a book 
written expressly, as some suppose, to tell us how 
Jesus came, taught, and died to save people from 
going to hell, the name of the awful place should be 
mentioned only two dozen times ! Many a faithful 
clergyman has repeated the word more times in 
one sermon than it is found in all the writings of 
the Apostles. But the ominous words are in the 
Bible, and our chief concern at present is to ascertain 



70 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

their import. What is, or was, Hades, the place in 
which the dead rich man in the parable was in 
torments ? 

In most of the printed Greek New Testaments 
the word Hades occurs in 1 Cor. xv. 55 ; but in 
the opinion of the best modern critics, the word 
which Saint Paul wrote was not Hades, but thanate, 
death ; and believing this, the learned authors of the 
Ke vised Version translate the passage, fci death, 
where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" 
Probably this is correct; and if so, Hades is men- 
tioned but ten times in the New Testament. 

In his speech on the memorable clay of Pentecost, 
Saint Peter (Acts ii. 27, 31) twice quotes Ps. xvi. 
10: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither 
wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption." 
In the psalm the word rendered hell is Shecl;"m 
Saint Peter's Greek translation it is Hades. In the 
mind of the Apostle, SJteol and Hades were one and 
the same. As already shown, Sheol never signifies 
hell, and of course Hades in these two instances does 
not mean hell ; evidently it signifies grave. Saint 
Peter quotes the passage as a prophecy of the res- 
urrection of Christ: " Thou wilt not leave my soul 
[i. e., me] in the grave, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy 
Holy One to see [undergo the] corruption" incident 
to a buried corpse. From this Peter infers the resur- 
rection of Jesus, and nothing more. Omitting these 
two instances as not hinting a hell, there remain 



HADES. 71 

only nine passages in the New Testament in which 
Hades is rendered hell. What does it mean in these 
passages? 

About b. c. 280 some seventy learned Jewish 
rabbis translated the Hebrew Old Testament into 
Greek. We have this translation. It is called the 
Septuagint. In this version, in sixty-one of the 
sixty-five places in which Sheol occurs, it is ren- 
dered Hades. This fact shows that the learned men 
of that age supposed the two words had one and the 
same meaning. This Greek version of the Old Tes- 
tament was in common use among the Jews in the 
days of Jesus, and was quoted by him and his Apos- 
tles, and thus approved as correct. Bearing in mind 
the fact that Hades, like Sheol, never has the mean- 
ing of the English word hell, we are prepared to 
examine and understand the eight other passages in 
which it occurs : — 

Matt. xi. 23: " And thou, Capernaum, which 
art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to 
Hades." When these words were spoken, Caper- 
naum was a wealth}* and flourishing city ; but it had 
not literally been u exalted unto heaven." It was a 
wicked town, and hence destined to become small 
and miserable, but not literally to be '-brought 
down to Hades." The manifest meaning is that the 
city was to be brought down from great prosperity 
to poverty and wretchedness. The terms heaven and 
Hades are used metaphorically ; and there is not 



72 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

the remotest allusion to the after-cleath location or 
condition of any human soul. 

Matt. xvi. 18: "Thou art Peter [a rock], and 
upon this rock I will build my church ; and the gates 
of Hades shall not prevail against it." The language 
is still figurative, and the allusion is to Hades as the 
grave, the realm of the dead. Death is the gate — 
all deaths are gates, entrances to the grave — to 
Hades. " Gates of Hades," therefore, means death. 
Death is represented as the enemy and destroyer of 
men and human institutions. It has swept away 
and consigned to oblivion man}' a religious sect, 
many a theory, church, chyv, and nation. But the 
Church of Christ was not to perish, not to be over- 
thrown, but to live and flourish forever. This is 
evidently what Jesus meant, and all he meant. 
Hence this verse does not contain even an allusion 
to " the place of punishment of the wicked after the 
general judgment." 

Luke x. 15: "And thou, Capernaum, which art 
exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to Hades." 
This statement is the same as that in Matt. xi. 23, 
which has already been quoted and explained. 

"Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither 
wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." 
Acts ii. 27, 31. 

"He [King David] spake of the resurrection of 
Christ, that his soul was not left in Hades, neither 
his flesh did see corruption." Vide Ps. xvi. 10. 



HADES. 73 

These two passages have been commented upon 
already ; but the exact fulfilment of the prophecy is 
wortlry of notice. Jesus died on Friday, and was 
immediately placed in a tomb. But early on the 
following Sunday morning, without any taint of dis- 
solution, he arose, and left the tomb, to live forever- 
more. This is the historical fact. The Apostle was 
trying to persuade the Jews that the crucified and 
risen Jesus was their promised Messiah ; and his 
explanation of the words of King David must have 
convinced his candid hearers. Whatever word the 
Apostle used, it is quite evident that he was not 
thinking of hell in the orthodox sense of perdition. 

1 Cor. xv. 55: u O death, where is thy sting? 
grave, where is thy victory?" As stated before, 
the revisers of the New Testament substituted death 
for grave; but as some may still believe that the 
original word was Hades, a few words of explanation 
ma} T be needful. Having stated and elucidated the 
doctrine of the resurrection of all mankind from the 
grave, he closes with the triumphant exclamation, 
" O grave, or realm of death, where is thy victory? 
Thy prisoners are all gone, and thy dark domain is 
empty," There is no allusion to hell. In fact, Saint 
Paul never uses the word Hades in any of his epistles. 
Possibly he did not believe in hell. 

Rev. i. 18 : " I am he that liveth, and was dead ; 
and, behold, I am alive forevermore, and have the 
ke} T s of Hades and of death." We humbly confess 



74 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

that as a whole we do not understand Saint John's 
Revelation ; and we are inclined to believe that no 
one in modern times fully grasps all its deep mean- 
ing. To us the book seems like a grand panorama, 
in which the scenes are all striking, and some very 
beautiful ; but not all are intelligible. Perhaps a 
person can be a real Christian and not comprehend 
all the mysterious visions seen in the isle of Pat- 
mos. It is clear, however, that in the passage above 
quoted, the speaker is our risen Lord. In his glori- 
fied state he has at least two ke}s, — that is, instru- 
mentalities by which to unlock and open. One is 
the key of death, by which he has opened the solemn 
mystery of death, and shown to us its nature and 
operation. He came to abolish death, and bring 
to light life immortal. He said, " Whosoever liveth 
and believe th in me shall never die." Death is the 
sloughing off of the animal body ; the spirit never 
dies. It has a spiritual body, and lives on forever. 
This is the revealment of Christ. The other opening 
instrumentality is the key of Hades. What does that 
mean? To our mind, the supposition that Hades is 
a close-walled prison, that its doors or gates are 
locked, that Christ is the janitor and has the key 
to unlock its " adamantine portals," is a theory that 
seems too unreasonable, materialistic, and absurd 
to be worthy of comment or serious thought. But 
the supposition that Hades is the realm of the dead, 
and that Christ by his resurrection opened the 



HADES. 75 

imaginary Hadean world and left it open, — that he 
has, lie is, the key, and that his going out of the 
tomb broke the bolt, " burst the bars," and disclosed 
the reality of a continuous and spiritual life for 
all the human race, — seems to us Scriptural, rea- 
sonable, and satisfactory ; and we adopt it without 
further investigation. 

Rev. vi. 8 : u I looked, and behold a pale horse ; 
and his name that sat on him was Death ; and 
Hades followed with him." This, of course, is figur- 
ative language. The pale horse, its rider, and 
their follower were not real things, but symbolical 
representations of future events. It is easy to sup- 
pose that they meant the pale disease, death that 
accompanies disease, and the grave or under- world 
that closes over the dead. That this is the mean- 
ing is evident from the context : " And power was 
given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to 
kill with sword, hunger, death, and the beasts of the 
earth." There is no allusion to anything in a future 
life. 

Rev. xx. 13, 14: "And the sea gave up the 
dead that was in it, and death and Hades deliv- 
ered up the dead that were in them. And death 
and Hades were cast into the lake of fire." In the 
chapter on the " Second Death," we shall give this 
startling dramatic scene a careful examination ; but 
our present task is to find the meaning of Hades. 
It is however worthy of notice, that this is the last 



76 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

passage in the Bible in which the word occurs, and 
it describes the last end of Hades. It is not, as some 
have supposed, a lake of fire, but a something out- 
side of the lake and distinct from it, — a something 
that is to be cast into the lake of fire, and there lose 
its identity and cease to exist. It and its precur- 
sor, death, are to share the same fate, — extinction. 
This is a Scriptural doctrine. Death and the grave, 
the state of the dead, are transient. There was a 
time, before the earth was peopled, when neither 
existed ; and there is a time coming when both 
will again cease to exist. Saint Paul asserts that 
" death, the last enem} T , shall be destroyed," and all 
the dead be raised. There will then be no realm of 
the dead, no peopled under-world, no Hades. This 
is the promise of the Gospel and the hope of the 
Church. 

In the ten passages quoted, it seems to us that no 
candid person can find even a hint that Hades is 
the name of the place for the endless punishment of 
the wicked after the final Judgment. But there is 
one passage more in which the word occurs ; and 
in that solitar\ T passage we must find, if at all, the 
proof that Hades is the Greek equivalent of hell, as 
hell is defined in our best dictionary. It is in the 
parable, or story, of the rich man and Lazarus. 

Luke xvi. 23 : " In Hades he lifted up his eyes, 
being in torments." Here perhaps the ct missing 
link," the needful proof, may be found. The state- 



HADES. 77 

ment is certainly very clear and concise. A rich 
man dies and is buried, bat presently finds himself 
alive in Hades. Other living people are there, 
and with one of them he converses. He is in tor- 
ment in a flame of fire. His tongue is parched and 
painful. He wants water, but there is no water 
within his reach. There is a canon, or gulf, that 
bisects the place, and all the water is on the side 
opposite to him. He begs Abraham to send him 
some water — a drop, if no more — to cool his 
tongue ; but the Patriarch says that such a thing 
should not and cannot be done. The curtain falls, 
and the burning victim is left there to suffer — " O 
Lord, how long?" In his Commentary, Dr. Adam 
Clarke says : u This is either a true story or a parable. 
If a true story, it tells w T hat has been ; if a parable, 
what may be." If this learned Methodist divine 
was right, the point is settled : Hades is the place 
of punishment of the wicked by fire. But before 
giving up the controversy, several facts should be 
considered. 

1. This is the only, passage in the Bible that 
speaks of Hades or Sheol as a place of punishment. 
These names occur more than seventy times ; yet in 
no instance except this, is there any allusion to tor- 
ment. If Hades is a penal realm, it can be proved 
only by this solitary passage. This is getting the 
subject down to a pretty fine point. If the usus 
loquendi of a word is worth considering, if there is 



78 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

any force in numbers, the chances are seventy to one 
that Plades does not mean a place for punishment, 
and that the passage under consideration is not to 
be taken literally, but figuratively. 

2. Even in this passage Hades indicates the 
under- world, the realm of the dead. u The rich 
man died and was buried ; and in Hades he lifted 
up his eyes " and spake. There had been no resur- 
rection and no general judgment. Alike he and 
Lazarus and Abraham were in Hades, and within 
speaking distance of each other. They were in the 
same realm, though separated b}' a deep chasm. 
This fact, is not in accordance with Evangelical 
theology, but opposed to it. 

3. Taken as a literal statement of what has been 
or may be, no moral can be deduced from the stoiw, 
except perhaps that it is dangerous to be rich and 
indulge in luxuries, and that those who are poor, 
sick, and " full of sores " ma}' hope to be carried to 
Abraham's bosom ! There is no intimation that the 
poor man had, or the rich man had not, believed and 
been baptized, repented, prayed, been converted, 
born again, forgiven, or washed in the atoning blood 
of the Lamb. In neither of these ways does it urge 
us to u escape from hell and fly to heaven." Ap- 
plied to individuals, it has no practical value, and 
is therefore, in this light, unworthy the lips of the 
great Teacher. 

4. The idea that Hades is a place in which there 



HADES. 79 

is torment was not known by the ancient Hebrew 
prophets, nor was it revealed by Christ. It was, 
however, believed before his birth, and appears to 
have been of pagan origin. It was a theory of the 
ancient Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. 
It is distinctly stated in the writings of Homer and 
Virgil, and alluded to in other ancient books. The 
size and shape of Hades are not definitely given by 
any author ; but by collecting the statements of the 
poets and mythologists of the olden time, a tolerably 
distinct outline may be obtained. Hades, the realm 
of the dead, — not their bodies, but their ghosts or 
shadows, — is below the dark realms of Gimme ria and 
Erebus, in the cavernous bowels of the earth. It is 
a sloping plain, divided into two parts, the higher 
and the lower. The upper portion is Elysium, the 
Elysian fields, Paradise, — a beautiful and pleasant 
region, wherein dwell the worthy dead. The lower 
part is Tartarus, — a horrible region encircled by the 
black Cocytus, a river formed by the salt tears of 
the unwortlry dead. Through this infernal region 
rolls flaming Phlegethon, a river of fire, in which are 
tormented the ghosts of the damned. This mon- 
strous myth, it is said, originated in Egypt before 
the age of Moses ; but as it was borne to other lands 
it was modified to suit the imaginations of the people 
by whom it was repeated. As tales of horror and 
woe are quite sure to be told far and near, to receive 
a patient if not an eager hearing, and to be regarded 



80 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

as true by the ignorant, it is quite probable that, in 
common with other nations, many of the Jews in 
the first century of our era held this or a somewhat 
similar idea of Hades to be genuine truth. At the 
present time, however, very few intelligent Christians 
believe in such a place or such a doom for the 
" finally impenitent." 

5. This, Hades, is the word, and the signification 
of the word, rendered hell in the passage under con- 
sideration. It is true that Jesus used this word ; 
but the supposition that he believed the heathen 
myth to be a reality — believed that a certain dead 
man found himself in a flame of fire, and begged 
Abraham to send another dead man with water for 
his burning tongue — is not only utterly absurd, 
but disgusting. We cannot think that the Son of 
God believed in a pagan myth. We are obliged to 
suppose that he used a common word and a com- 
mon notion, not to indorse the notion, but rather 
to express and emphasize an important truth, — the 
truth, perhaps, that the rich, proud, bigoted Jewish 
hierarchy was doomed to an awful and final fate, and 
that the Gentiles, poor in faith and hope, and sore 
with the evils of heathenism, were to be raised to 
the felicit} r of the Abrahamic faith. Evidently the 
ston T of the rich man and Lazarus is not an account 
of anything that has been or may be, but is a par- 
able woven from the then current notions of the 
mythical Hades. 



HADES. 81 

Thus it appears that not one of the ten passages 
of Scripture in which Hades occurs, was intended 
to reveal a place or condition of punishment for the 
wicked after the general judgment. In the Revised 
Version of the New Testament the word hell is not 
found in one of these passages, Hades being left 
unchanged. This is honest and fair. There may be 
a hell, a place of endless misery ; but neither Sheol 
nor Hades is its Bible name. This is the decision 
of the ripest Christian scholarship of the nineteenth 
century. 

A brief notice of one more passage properly be- 
longs to this chapter: (2 Peter ii. 4) "God spared 
not the angels that sinned, but cast them down 
to Tartarus, and delivered them into chains of 
darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." This 
statement has not much bearing upon the subject 
we are considering. It is found in an epistle re- 
specting whose authenticity there has long been no 
small doubt. It treats of sinning augels, a class of 
beings never alluded to by the Master, — persons 
in wiiose history we are not particularly interested. 
This is the only place in the Bible in which Tartarus 
is mentioned ; and no argument of much weight can 
be sustained hy a single and difficult text. Peter 
does not seem to regard Tartarus as a place of pun- 
ishment, but rather as a prison in which certain an- 
gels are kept, not in fire but in darkness, until the 
time of judgment. If, as shown above, Hades is 

6 



82 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

a fictitious place, then Tartarus, the lower part of 
Hades, is also a fictitious and not a real locality. 
Finally, Tartarus is not relied upon as the Greek 
name of hell by anybody. The terrible Bible name 
of the realm of woe must be Gehenna, if it has a 
name ; but the examination of that fearful appellative 
is reserved for the next chapter. 



GEHENNA. 83 



IX. 

GEHENNA. 

An evil tongue " defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the 
course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell [Gehenna]." — James 
iii. 6. 

AS we commence the examination of the only other 
word in the Bible that is or can be rendered 
helU our sense of responsibility' becomes oppressive 
and almost appalling. If there is a place of inter- 
minable woe to which sinners are in clanger of going, 
and if belief in such a realm lessens the danger of 
going thither, and we frame a plausible argument 
disproving the existence of such a world and doom, 
and even one soul is so misled by our logic as to 
be forever lost, we commit an unpardonable sin, — a 
crime that we shall never cease to regret. We are 
unwilling to perpetrate so great a wrong. Would it 
not be better for us to stop here and barn our manu- 
script, than to go on and so mislead or confuse un- 
wary souls that the}' may blunder down to everlasting 
woe? Yes, certainly. We pause. But on reflection 
we perceive another aspect to this momentous sub- 
ject. If the doctrine of unending sin and suffering 
is false ; if it is but the hideous dream of supersti- 



84 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

tion ; if no soul ever was in danger of a destin}' so 
terrible ; if the Infinite Love is eventually to instruct, 
reform, purify, and save all mankind, — the glorious 
fact should be made known to every human being, 
that the Divine goodness niay no longer be doubted, 
and that timid people may not sink down in despair 
and become insane through fear of such a wrath to 
come. Bearing in mind both of these considerations, 
let us reverently proceed. 

"We have already shown that, as used in the Bible, 
neither Sheol, Hades, nor that part of Hades called 
Tartarus, signifies hell. Onlv one other word in the 
Scriptures is or can be translated hell, and that word 
is Gehenna. It is not in the Old Testament, but it 
occurs twelve times in the New Testament ; and in 
every instance it is rendered hell, even in the Revised 
Version. Here then is a name respecting whose 
meaning evangelical divines seem to have no doubt. 
But all Christendom has believed in some things that 
are now generally doubted, — ghosts and witches, for 
example ; and it is not certain that even wise and 
pious men have yet arrived at a full knowledge of ail 
truth. We cannot avoid asking, Who coined the 
ominous word Gehenna ? What was at first meant 
by it? And what change in significance, if any, has 
it undergone? But before trying to answer these 
questions, let us notice a few facts : — 

1. It is a remarkable fact that Gehenna occurs 
only twelve times in the entire Greek New Testa- 



GEHENNA. 85 

ment. This book has as much reading matter as a 
dozen long sermons; it contains the "gospel, the 
power of God unto salvation ;" it is our light, guide, 
and standard ; and it reveals all man needs to know 
about his duty and destiny. If Jesus and his first 
disciples believed in a place for everlasting punish- 
ment called Gehenna, and if they deemed a belief in 
such a place essential to salvation, it is very strange 
the name does not more frequently appear In the 
writings of the Apostles. Believers in this doctrine 
are not often so reticent. Few other religious books 
of its size, written by Evangelical Christians in mod- 
ern times, are so nearly destitute of a name for the 
realm of unending woe. To a candid mind this fact 
brings a doubt that Orthodoxy cannot remove : ' ' Per- 
haps the inspired writers did not know that Gehenna 
meant hell! " 

2. The New Testament contains twent} T -seven 
books ; and it is a remarkable fact that Gehenna 
is found in only four of them, — namel}', Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and James. Neither Jude in his brief 
letter, nor Peter in his two epistles, nor John the be- 
loved disciple in his Gospel, his Revelation, or his 
three epistles, nor Paul the Rabbi in his thirteen, 
penned the word even ofrce. Luke wrote an extended 
account of the Acts — tjiat is, the sayings and doings 
— of the Apostles, yet found no occasion to use the 
fearful name. Paul affirms that he " shunned not 
to declare all the counsel of God," yet he did not 



86 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

mention Gehenna. What does this mean ? What can 
it mean, except that in the estimation of the apostolic 
writers it was not a word of any great importance in 
the Christian religion, and was not the name of a 
place to which sinners were in danger of going after 
death ? 

3. So far as we know, Jesus in his three years' 
ministry uttered the word only eleven times, — on an 
average, less than once in three months. If his mis- 
sion was to save sinners from a place called hell, and 
if he understood Gehenna to be the proper name of 
that place, it is passing strange that he did not speak 
of it more frequently. Is not his reticence a mani- 
fest intimation that he regarded it as a word of no 
special importance? But what is still more remark- 
able, Jesus used the word on only four occasions : 
once, in saying that he who called his brother a fool 
was in danger of Gehenna; again, in saying that it 
is better to part with an offending (diseased) eye, 
hand, or foot, than to retain it and be cast into 
Gehenna; again, in exhorting his disciples to fear 
Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in 
Gehenna ; and again, in rebuking the malicious 
scribes and Pharisees. On two of these four occa- 
sions he was addressing the chosen Twelve, and 
only once did he mention the damnation of Gehenna. 
This reduces the matter to a point so fine that we are 
tempted to infer that the Gospel of Christ is not a 
Gehenna religion, and the New Testament not a 



GEHENNA. 87 

Gehenna book, but that it is a Gospel and a book 
minus hell. 

4. In several passages of Scripture, Gehenna is 
alluded to as a place or condition whose prominent 
characteristic is fire. From a. d. 500 to a. d. 1500 
— a thousand dreary years — almost the entire 
Christian Church believed it to be literal fire ; but 
this, nearly all educated Protestants of the present age 
discredit. The fire has gone out, and a great change 
in .public opinion has come about; yet there is just 
as strong Scripture proof that the fire is literal as 
that the place is literal. The two are inseparable, 
and each must share the fate of the other. Either 
both are real, or both are fictions. We must go back 
to literal fire, or give up the idea that Gehenna is a 
local habitation. 

5. The history of the word is worthy of considera- 
tion. Gehenna is the Greek way of spelling and 
pronouncing two Hebrew words that signif3 r the 
" Valle}^ of Hinnom." This phrase occurs thirteen 
times in the Old Testament ; but it is never trans- 
lated hell. It was a pleasant valley near Jerusalem, 
and probably received its name from one of its an- 
cient owners or occupants, — a man by the name of 
Hinnom. It is mentioned four times in the book of 
Joshua, as a part of the boundary line between the 
territories of Judah and Benjamin, — namely, Josh, 
xv. 8, and xviii. 16 ; and no one then dreamed that 
the peaceful and beautiful valley would eventually 



88 THROUGH THE SHADOWS, 

lend its name to hell. But strange changes took 
place. In the eastern part of this valley, in a place 
called Topheth or Tophet, — a name that probably 
means ct music grove," — King Solomon, contrary to 
the Mosaic law, consecrated a shrine to Moloch, an 
imaginary heathen god. During the reign of the 
idolatrous kings that succeeded Solomon, the horrid 
orgies of pagan worship were here celebrated. Hu- 
man sacrifices were made, and two wicked kings, — 
Ahaz and Manasseh, — and probably many other 
persons caused their own children to " pass through 
fire to Moloch ; " that is, to be burned alive to ap- 
pease or propitiate the cruel god. In a later age, the 
pious King Josiah abolished these horrid rites ; and, 
to prevent their recurrence, he desecrated the Valley 
of Hinnom by causing the filth and garbage of Jeru- 
salem to be carted into it. Thus the pleasant place 
was defiled and rendered unfit for public gatherings. 
In addition to this desecration, and to prevent the 
rotting carcasses of dead animals and the wormy 
heaps of filth from breeding pestilence, they were set 
on fire, and for ages the fire was kept burning. 
Speaking of this fire, which in a calm day only smoul- 
dered, Isaiah (xxx. 33) says: " The breath of the 
Lord [the wind], like a stream of brimstone, doth 
kindle it ; " and then it burned fiercely. Thus the 
Valkyv of Hinnom became as foul and loathsome, and 
its associations as revolting, as anything that can be 
imagined. 



GEHENNA. 89 

This is all the information about the place that 
can be gleaned from the Old Testament ; but in all 
probabilit}', its name, hy the laws of mental associa- 
tion and linguistic change, gradually became the 
synonyme or descriptive appellation of whatever was 
repulsive and horrible, — such as, for example, the 
awful punishment of sinners by war, pestilence, fam- 
ine, and conflagration. And after the Jews had 
been taught by the heathen to believe in a place of 
future punishment, the} T very naturally and properly 
gave it the worst name they could think of; and 
there being in pure Hebrew no word suitable for such 
a realm, by the aid of a little Greek they coined a 
new one, and christened the dismal abode Ge Henna. 

Now, in what sense did our Saviour use this new 
word? We shudder, as we call to mind the disgust- 
ing credulity and utter heartlessness of the degraded 
idolaters, who burned alive their helpless children in 
the Valley of Hinnom ; we detest and loathe the 
barbarous spirit and principles that would tolerate 
such fiendish atrocity ; must we believe that Jesus 
in using the word meant to teach us that God will 
forever burn millions of His helpless children in Ge- 
henna? Is there no way to escape a conclusion so 
horrible? Is it not possible honestly to believe 
that in the mouth of Jesus the word had a figurative, 
a secondary, and less harsh meaning? To us this 
question is of special interest. We want to respect 
and love God with our whole heart ; but bow can we. 



90 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

if He causes millions of His children, our brothers 
and sisters, to agonize forever in the fire of Gehenna, 
which His breath, like a stream of brimstone kindles 
into a flaming storm ? When we think of their tor- 
ment, and call to mind the many devout men who 
have believed in it, and feel a twinge of fear that it 
may be true, we are driven to the desperate verge of 
either doubting God's existence or denying His 
goodness. If the doctrine is true, we can fear and 
tremble, but cannot love Him and be glad. What 
shall we do? Father, forgive us, and help us to un- 
derstand Thy word. With this prayer in our hearts, 
and the facts in our mind as above stated, let us 
carefully and critically study the twelve passages 
of Scripture in which Gehenna is mentioned. 

Matt. v. 29, 30: " If thy right eye offend thee, 
pluck it out and cast it from thee : for it is profit- 
able for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
and not that thy whole body should be cast into Ge- 
henna. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it 
off and cast it from thee ; for it is profitable for thee 
that one of thy members should perish, and not that 
thy whole body should be cast into Gehenna." 

Matt, xviii. 9 : " If thine eye offend thee, pluck it 
out and cast it from thee : it is better for thee to 
enter into life with one eye, rather than having two 
eyes to be cast into Gehenna fire." 

Mark ix. 43-48 : "If thy hand offend thee, cut it 
off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, 



GEHENNA. 91 

than having two hands to go into Gehenna, — into the 
fire that never shall be quenched ; where their worm 
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy 
foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to 
enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast 
into Gehenna, into the fire that never shall be 
quenched ; where their worm dieth not, and the fire 
is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck 
it out : it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom 
of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be 
cast into Gehenna fire ; where their worm dieth not, 
and the fire is not quenched." 

It should be noticed that these are parallel pas- 
sages, — Matthew and Mark quoting the same say- 
ings of the Master ; Luke and John either forgetting 
them, or deeming other matters of more impor- 
tance, — and that these six, or rather three, state- 
ments are mere variations of one idea, one truth ; 
namely, it is better to part with an offending eye, 
hand, or foot, than by retaining it to be cast into 
Gehenna. Thus six of the twelve times in which 
Gehenna occurs in the New Testament melt down 
into one ; and this one expression is not so much a 
solemn warning to great sinners of imminent dan- 
ger, as it is friendly advice to his dear disciples. 
The literal meaning is obvious, — it is better for a 
person having a badly diseased eye, hand, or foot, 
to suffer its amputation, and thus regain health, 
than to retain it, suffer by it, let it poison the whole 



92 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

body and ultimate in a painful death. The moral 
instruction is equally apparent, — it is better sud- 
denly and entirely to break away from demoralizing 
companions, habits, usages, opinions, however pleas- 
ant, than to retain them and by them be dragged 
down to rain. This is a valuable lesson, and worthy 
of being taught bj* the Saviour. It was then and 
there needed bj T his Jewish disciples, to whom the 
Mosaic religion was dear as the apple of the eye ; 
but from which they must break away, or not be 
Christians, and not escape the fieiy trials about to 
consume their nation. And not only the Twelve, 
but we also, before we can enter that kingdom of 
God which is " righteousness, peace, and joy in 
the Holy Spirit," must put from us all things that 
offend. 

Was this what Jesus meant? Did he indulge in 
figurative language, or are his statements to be 
taken literally? If they are, then Gehenna is a 
literal place, and in it are literal dead human 
bodies, burned by literal fire, and gnawed by literal 
worms. This is a materialism so gross and ghastly, 
that very few educated men at the present day be- 
lieve in it. Practically, the worms have died, the 
fire gone out, the place vanished, and the theory of 
the resurrection and immortality of human corpses 
been abandoned. Scarcely anybody tries to believe 
in the literal interpretation. 

There are other difficulties. One might guess that 



GEHENNA. 93 

impenitent sinners are cast, soul and body, into 
Gehenna, to be burned up, annihilated. Such a fate 
would be infinitely better than endless agon}' ; but 
the texts furnish not even a hint of conditional 
immortality. Or, one might surmise that the unfor- 
tunates are cast into Gehenna fire to be burned and 
wormed for ever ; but the duration of their stay 
is not mentioned. The fire will not, cannot, be 
quenched ; the worm does not die ; but for aught 
we are told to the contrary, the victims may be 
taken out the next second after they are cast in. 
Possibly too, the baptism in fire may so purify the 
doomed that they will immediately become fit to be 
raised to a higher life. In every respect, these 
statements of Jesus fail to support the doctrine of 
endless misery. Our reason compels us to adopt 
the figurative interpretation given above ; and thus, 
six of the passages containing the sinister word 
slip away without giving an intimation that Ge- 
henna is a place of punishment for the wicked after 
the final judgment. 

. Matt. x. 28: ^ Fear not them which kill the 
body, but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather 
fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and bod}' 
in Gehenna." 

Luke xii. 4, 5 : " My friends, be not afraid of them 
that kill the bed}', and after that have no more that 
they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall 
fear ; fear Him, which after he hath killed hath power 



94 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

to cast into Gehenna." Theologians are not agreed 
respecting the meaning of these words. Much 
criticism has been lavished upon them, and still, to 
man}' minds, their import is not clear. If Jesus 
intended to teach the doctrine of eternal punishment, 
on this occasion, it is strange he did not enunciate 
it more distinctly. On a subject so momentous, 
great plainness of speech is to be expected. This 
much however is patent: Jesus told his disciples, his 
friends, not to be afraid of those who could only kill 
the mortal bod}', but to fear, revere, a power that 
could do more ; that could destroy both soul and 
body in Gehenna. Some commentators think he 
meant, fear not the Jewish hierarchy, but the Roman 
government. The Jews might commit murder, but 
the Roman government reserved to itself alone the 
right to execute criminals, and an occasional homi- 
cide was not so much to be dreaded, as the pitiless 
persecution of the imperial power. A hundred 
years later, such a warning would have been timely, 
but when the remark was made, the Jews were 
the most bitter and dangerous enemies of the 
Christians. Other critics affirm, and with better 
reason, that the meaning is, fear God rather than 
man; or as Paul puts it, "w r e ought to obey God 
rather than man." This advice is in accord with 
all the teachings of Christ ; and it appears to have 
been the rule of the Apostles as they went forth to 
ct preach the Gospel to every creature." lie who 



GEHENNA. 95 

shrinks from this rule has not the spirit of Christ, 
and is not worthy the name of Christian. 

If we were asked wlw we should revere and obey 
God rather than man, our hearts would reply, "be- 
cause He is better, wiser, and stronger than we are." 
Jesus gave another reason ; — God can inflict more 
severe punishments. Man can only murder us ; 
God can cause us to endure greater evils ; war, 
famine, pestilence, bondage, and being destroyed 
body and soul in Gehenna. This is what Jesus said, 
and this is true. No one can doubt the ability of 
the Almighty to destroy a dead body or a soul, when 
and where He pleases ; but it is difficult to find any 
reason for taking a corpse to Gehenna to destroy 
it. Chemical decomposition very rapidly destroys, 
chancres into other forms, the bodies of all that die. 
Besides, a dead body is entirely devoid of sensation, 
and it is of very small consequence when, where, or 
how it " returns to the dust as it was." We are un- 
willing to suppose that Jesus made a remark so vapid 
as to say that God is able to take a lifeless human 
form to a spiritual Gehenna, and there destroy it! 
There must be a meaning more profound than this. 

The destruction of the soul is a weightier matter. 
In the six passages respecting the offending eye, 
hand, and foot, nothing is said about punishment, 
and the fair inference is, that the wicked were cast 
into Gehenna to be burned up, — that is, annihilated. 
In the passage under consideration, this inference 



96 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

ripens into a certainty. Gehenna is a place for 
destruction; and in it God is able to destroy both 
the body and the soul of a sinner. When a body 
is destroyed, it ceases to be a bod}', and when a 
soul is destroyed, it ceases to be a soul ; each is 
extinct, annihilate. But annihilation is not painful ; 
it is the end of pain and woe. Of course God does 
not indulge in the cruelty of tormenting or per- 
mitting to be tormented, those whom He is about to 
destroy. In this view of the case, Gehenna is the 
place for putting an end to punishment. It ma}' be 
said that God does not do all that He is able to do ; 
but if He never has destroyed, and never will de- 
stroy a sinner, then the advice, " fear God because 
He is able to destroy both bod}' and soul," is utterly 
destitute of force or point. Jesus must have meant 
that God actually does do what is indicated by the 
words he uttered. Did he really teach the unphilo- 
sophical doctrine of the annihilation of the finally 
impenitent? Very few Christians believe this doc- 
trine. We cannot. Then what did he mean? It is 
evident that the more we try to give his words, in 
this instance, a literal interpretation, the more we 
get into doubt and darkness. We are obliged to go 
back to first principles ; — to believe that our Lord 
teaches us to fear, revere, obey the mighty God, 
rather than weak and often wicked man ; and to 
suppose that the reason assigned is stated in figura- 
tive language which possibly, at this late day, we 



GEHENNA, 97 

may not fully understand. One thing is certain; 
he did not affirm or intimate that Gehenna is a realm 
of endless punishment. This is enough for our pres- 
ent purpose. These two passages fail to sustain the 
evangelical notion of hell. 

Matt. v. 22: " Whosoever is angry with his 
brother without a cause shall be in clanger of the 
judgment ; and whosoever shall say to his brother, 
Raca, shall be in danger of the council ; but whoso- 
ever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of 
Gehenna fire." There seems to be but little differ- 
ence in the magnitude of these three misdemeanors. 
The first is anger, the second is contempt, the third 
is vituperation. Neither is a crime nor a great sin. 
If the three are nearly alike in turpitude, the danger 
in each case must be about the same. It is unrea- 
sonable to suppose, that a person guilt}' of the first or 
second is in danger of an earthly, temporal penalty 
only, while he who is guilt}' of the third is in danger 
of endless punishment in hell fire. The passage, 
however, contains not even a hint of the duration of 
either of the penalties. For aught said to the con- 
trary, the penalty by Gehenna fire may be instanta- 
neous destruction. There must be reason in religion. 
It may be that by Judgment, Jesus meant a lower 
Jewish court of justice ; by Council, the higher court, 
the Sanhedrim ; and by Gehenna fire, the greatest 
punishment that Jews or Romans could inflict ; but 
the point is of little practical importance. To our 

7 



98 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

mind, the passage resembles the parallelism of 
Hebrew poetiy, — it has one idea expressed in three 
ways with a kind of crescendo emphasis. The les- 
son for us is manifest and impressive : — Every 
person who indulges in either of these three faults, 
or in an}' other offence against good morals or 
manners, has entered the broad road that leads to 
destruction, and is in danger of becoming a great 
sinner, and of suffering a severe penalty. Shun the 
beginning of wrong ; indulge not in any, even the 
least, misdemeanor. Our Lord does not intimate that 
the lire is in the spirit world, or that it will burn the 
sinner after death ; and we are at libertj T to infer that 
all three of the dangers are of penalties inflicted in 
the present stage of existence. Thus another proof- 
text fails to support the theory that Gehenna is the 
place of punishment for those who die in their sins. 

James iii. 5, 6: " Behold how great a matter 
a little fire kindleth ! And the tongue is a fire, a 
world of iniquity : so is the tongue among our mem- 
bers, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on 
fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire of 
Gehenna. " The Greek text of this passage is some- 
what obscure, and the translation is faulty ; but it 
is clear that in the mind of its author Gehenna fire 
is not literal fire, but a something that burns in this 
world, sets on fire the fleshly tongue, sets on fire the 
course or wheel of nature, and damages, — puts out 
of order, — the sinner before his death. Whether 



GEHENNA. 99 

St. James did or did not believe in a literal lake of 
fire in the spirit realm is not apparent. He merely 
employs the then current superstitious notions of 
Gehenna, to emphasize the vileness and pernicious 
influence of a foul, unbridled tongue. As he does not 
again allude to Gehenna, it is fair to infer that he 
did not deem it the name of a real realm of woe. 

Matt, xxiii. 15 : " Woe unto you, scribes and 
Pharisees, lrypocrites ! for ye compass sea and land 
to make one proselyte ; and when he is made, ye 
make him twofold more the child of Gehenna than 
yourselves." This allusion to Gehenna is so mani- 
festly figurative that little comment is needed. If it 
is a parent and has children, it is not a place but a 
person. But in the Scriptures, the words, u son of, 
children of," etc., often indicate, not relationship, but 
resemblance. James and John were called " Boan- 
erges," — that is, sons of thunder. Jesus said, the 
malicious Jews were " of their father the devil." The 
phrase " sons of Belial" is not an affirmation that 
a person of that name ever existed, but only that 
the men so stigmatized were worthless fellows. So 
the phrase " child of Gehenna" is not equivalent to 
an assertion that there is a lake of fire and brim- 
stone ; it simply -means that the proselyte alluded to, 
was like the Valley of Hinnom, foul, defiled, corrupt. 
Whether Gehenna is an imaginary or real place, the 
statement made by Jesus has the same point and 
force. 



100 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Matt, xxiii. 33: " Ye serpents, ye generation 
of vipers, how can }^e escape the damnation of 
Gehenna?" This is certainly a terse and fearful 
inquiry. At first sight, it seems to be in perfect 
harmon} T with the theory that hell is a place of pun- 
ishment for the finally impenitent, and the word 
'•' damnation " is in itself alarming. But the strength 
of the passage as a proof-text is weakened by 
several considerations : — 

1. This is the only verse in the Bible that contains 
the phrase " damnation of Gehenna." If it signi- 
fies endless perdition, it is very remarkable that 
Jesus and his Apostles did not use it frequently. 
One solitaiy sentence, and that one a question, is a 
very small foundation on which to build a theory 
so tremendous. Five hundred times would be none 
too man}' to alarm and warn those in danger of 
eternal woe. Possibly this is not the meaning of 
the phrase. 

2. Some learned Orthodox men do not indorse 
the translation. Drs. Campbell and Noyes render 
the phrase "the punishment of Gehenna." In the 
Eevised New Testament it is rendered "the judg- 
ment of Gehenna." If this does not change the 
sense, it is certainly a relief to be rid of the frightful, 
vulgar word " damnation." We are very glad to 
learn that our Saviour never used it. We think it 
would be a benefit to the Church and the world to 
drop it out of our language. 



GEHENNA. 101 

3. The passage contains no information respecting 
the nature, intensity, or duration of the doom. It may 
be very brief ; it may be instantaneous ; it may be 
destruction ; and as Jesus once spoke of both body 
and soul being destnyyed in Gehenna, the punishment 
alluded to in all probability was destruction. This 
thought is also a great relief to our mind, because 
it abnegates the awful evangelical interpretation. 

4. Anyhow, it is not certain that Jesus used the 
word Gehenna as the name of a place of punishment 
for the wicked after their death ; nor is it certain 
that he believed in such a place. But it is certain 
that he distinctly foresaw the calamities about to 
fall on Jerusalem and the Jewish nation ; that he 
foresaw the siege, the fighting factions in the city, 
the famine, the fire, the destruction of the town and 
temple, and the dispersion of the entire nation. 
These awful scenes would be a Gehenna on a gigantic 
scale. He also foresaw that the scribes, Pharisees, 
and nearly all the people would go on in sin to the 
bitter end. Hence it was natural for him to say to 
them , " How can 3-e " — equivalent to " Ye cannot " — 
14 escape the Gehenna judgment and punishment," — 
the wrath about to come? We believe this was the 
thought that suggested the words under considera- 
tion, and that there is in the passage not even an 
allusion to an after-death, spiritual Valley of Hin- 
nom. And this, to our mind, is a candid and rea- 
sonable conclusion. 



102 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Every one of the twelve passages that contain the 
word Gehenna has now been quoted and critically 
examined. We do not den}' that a person who be- 
lieves and intends to believe in an endless hell, and 
who desires to find Bible proof of his doctrine, may, 
in some of these texts, discover the outlines of his 
theory, and have his belief strengthened thereby. 
His mental training and confirmed habits of thought 
would lead to this result. But we do claim that a 
fair, manly, and reasonable explanation of these 
twelve texts can be made without admitting that 
even in a single instance Gehenna denotes a realm 
of eternal w r oe. There ma}' be such a realm, but if 
our reasoning is correct, neither Sheol, Hades, 
Tartarus, nor Gehenna is its Bible name; and the 
fact that the sacred Scriptures contain no name for 
such a place compels the conclusion that no such 
place exists in the universe. There is no vast cavern 
hot w r ith burning brimstone, and used as a prison for 
lost souls, in the earth, sun, moon, or stars ; and the 
thought of a place so horrid, so frightful to the weak- 
minded, so dishonorable to the good Father, ought 
to be eliminated from the human mind ; and unless 
the signs of the times are deceptive, the process of 
elimination is now rapidly going on. 



ANNIHILATION. 103 



X. 

ANNIHILATION. 

" The Lord preserveth all them that love Him, but all the wicked 
will He destroy." — Ps. cxlv. 20. 

T T ERE is the classification found in so many pas- 
sages of Scripture ; but the fate of the wicked 
is described by a word hitherto unnoticed in these 
pages, — " all the wicked will He destroy? Those 
who revere, love, and obey God are the righteous ; 
and they are to be preserved, saved. All the rest 
of mankind are the wicked ; and the}' are to be de- 
stroyed, put out of existence, annihilated. 

We may not be able to decide in every instance to 
which class each of our acquaintances belongs ; but 
we are quite sure the two classes exist, God is the 
absolute Good ; and those who truly love goodness, 
honest}', charity, justice, right, love God, and they 
are to be preserved. Those who do not possess these 
virtues are the wicked, and they are sooner or later 
to be destroyed. If their destruction means their 
annihilation, Universalism is not true. 

"The Lord preserveth all them that love Him.'' 
This is in harmony with His character, and with our 
idea of right. They ought to be preserved to bless 



104 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

the world ; and the}' are. God is their Shepherd, 
Guardian, Keeper, Helper, all the time. Their pres- 
ervation is not miraculous, but natural, general, con- 
tinuous. Their virtues are a charm that drives away 
the evil and attracts the good. An inward impulse 
leads them to seek and associate with the virtuous, 
and there find safety and protection. Thus, by the 
law and will of God, those who love Him are pre- 
served. But there are some, we fear man}', who do 
not love the Lord, — who knowingly, willingly, and 
wilfully do wrong. These are the wicked, and all of 
them God will destroy. This is the result of, and 
the punishment for, their wickedness. Many inspired 
men solemnly testify that this is their certain and 
awful destiny. Job (xxi. 30) says : u The wicked is 
reserved to the day of destruction." Solomon says 
(Prov. xxix. 1) : "He that being often reproved 
hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and 
that without remedy." Malachi (iv. 1) says : " Be- 
hold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven ; 
and all the proud and all that do wickedly shall be 
stubble : and the day that cometh shall burn them 
up, saith the Lord of hosts ; it shall leave neither 
root nor branch." This seems an entire and final 
end of them. Jesus said (Matt. vii. 18) : " Wide is 
the gate and broad the way that leads to destruction, 
and many there be which go in thereat." Again, 
Jesus said (Matt. x. 28) : " Fear not them which kill 
the body but are not able to kill the soul ; but rather 



A NNIHILA TION. 105 

fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in Gehenna." Saint Paul, speaking of those who do 
not obey the Gospel (2 Thess. i. 9), says they ;c shall 
be punished with everlasting destruction from the 
presence of the Lord." As God is omnipresent, 
banishment from Him must be annihilation. Both 
body and soul must cease to exist. There are other 
passages ; but these are sufficient to show that the 
destruction of the wicked is a plain Bible doctrine. 
We ma}' not deny or doubt it ; but what does their 
destruction imply ? 

To destroy means " to put out of existence'; " we can 
scarcely imagine any other definition. When a thing 
is destiwed, it ceases to exist. When a house is 
destroyed by fire, it vanishes from existence. When 
Sodom was destnryed by volcanic agency, both the 
city and the site on which it stood disappeared. 
When a soul is destined, it does not remain in the 
realm of reality. Reasoning in this natural way some 
candid Christians have been led to renounce both the 
doctrine of endless misery and the doctrine of uni- 
versal salvation, and to believe in conditional immor- 
tality, — the righteous to live forever in heaven, the 
finally impenitent to be annihilated. The people 
called Adventists believe and openly advocate this 
doctrine ; and destruction is so much more merciful 
than immortal suffering that not a few tender-hearted 
members of evangelical churches are said to be in- 
clined to this belief. It is said the number of 



106 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Annihilationists is increasing ; and there are very 
plausible reasons for this increase. 

The best way to dispose of a thing utterly worth- 
less and repulsive is to destroy it, — put it out of 
existence. A soul utterly depraved — a soul that 
neither man nor God can reform and render holy, 
beautiful, and happy — is entirely worthless and re- 
pulsive ; and both wisdom and goodness demand that 
it be put out of existence. God is perfectly wise 
and good ; and therefore all such souls, if there are 
an}', will He destroy. As has already been shown, 
the Bible distinctly, repeatedly, and emphatically 
asserts that the wicked are to be destroyed ; and we 
must believe this, or repudiate the Word of God. 
Christians are not willing to throw away the sacred 
Scriptures ; and hence some of them adopt the theory 
of annihilation. Frequenth^ the punishment threat- 
ened is of a destructive nature, — is by fire ; and fire 
consumes and destro\'S. If a tree is burned up, 
trunk, roots, and branches, no trace of it as a tree 
remains. In like manner, if a person were burned 
up, body and soul, no trace of his personality would 
remain. And besides, so far as we can judge, if a 
spiritual being w r ere subjected to ceaseless, hopeless, 
and extreme agon}', as by fire, it would in the lapse 
of ages gradually lose sensation and intelligence, and 
finally become extinct. The bare thought of unend- 
ing agony is painful. YTe are unable to perceive how 
such a doom for the wicked could be any benefit to 



ANNIHILATION. 107 

them or to the saved, or how it could redound to 
God's gloiy. We can hardly refrain from feeling 
that an eternal hell filled with ceaseless misery seems 
like a foul stain, a hideous blotch, on creation, and 
an awful reproach to the great Creator, — a dark 
cloud without any silver lining, — a frightful, pain- 
ful mysteiy whose cold shadow dims the light of 
heaven itself. Hence good men are glad to find any 
plausible theory through which to escape from believ- 
ing in the doctrine of endless misery. Conditional 
immortality is such a theory. The annihilation of a 
sinner would be a great and eternal loss, but it would 
be infinitely better than eternal pain. We can approve 
and even applaud the destruction of an irreclaimable, 
worthless soul. Admit this theory to be correct, and 
all the fiery threatenings of the Bible would be liter- 
ally true. Far off, perhaps, but surely, a time 
would come when there would be no sin or sor- 
row, but God would be all in all. Influenced by 
these considerations, many worthy Christians are 
verging toward a belief in the ultimate annihilation 
of the " finally impenitent." 

But is this doctrine true? Is it in accordance with 
reason and revelation? Has God called into exist- 
ence millions of intelligent, sensitive, spiritual beings 
that under favorable circumstances might have been 
fitted to " glorify and enjoy Him forever," only to 
annihilate them? Is it certain that an}' human soul 
is so debased that Infinite Grace cannot bring about 



108 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

its regeneration ? Has any one of us fathomed the 
plans and purposes of the Eternal? Is it not more 
wise and safe to doubt the meaning of words than to 
doubt the Almighty Love ? We do not know that the 
doctrine of annihilation is true ; we can have no faith 
in a calamity so dreadful; and, for what seem good 
reasons, we do not believe in conditional immortality. 
1. The absolute annihilation of anything is unphil- 
osophical and unthinkable. There is no proof that 
any particle of matter has ever been put out of exist- 
ence. Burn a piece of wood, for example, and still — 
as ash, moisture, and gas — every ounce, every atom 
of it remains. The form changes ; the elements 
endure. Every grain of our bodies is as old as the 
earth, and as indestructible as her solid rocks. Fur- 
ther, science informs us that no force, power, or 
agent is ever lost. The caloric that warms our 
homes or drives our locomotives radiates and be- 
comes latent, but still exists. The electricity that 
flashes along the clouds with such terrible swiftness 
is not hurrying into non-existence, but merely chang- 
ing its location. The force that moves the world is 
inexhaustible and enduring; and the fountain of life 
is ever flowing and never exhausted. Everything 
goes round and round in a circle. The dust returns 
to the dust as it was ; and the spirit returns to God 
who gave it, not to stop, but to begin a new journey. 
Still further, the human soul seems to be a monad, 
an indivisible point, an absolute unit. Thought, 



A NNIUILA TION. 109 

feeling, will, memoiy, seem to spring from a common 
centre ; and as that indivisible, central unit cannot be 
diffused and lost, personal immortality must remain 
intact and eternal. 

2. The annihilation of an intelligent, spiritual be- 
ing would be a waste, a loss, not in harmony with the 
laws of nature or the economy of God. The soul 
of an infant rightly trained can become a perfect 
man, an angel, an archangel, an ornament to heaven, 
a glory to God, forever ; what an immense and eter- 
nal loss would be its extinction ! The same sublime 
possibilities exist in every infant born into the world. 
Each has a germ of goodness and greatness that can 
be developed into Divine excellence. This was the 
reason why God so loved the sinful world as to send 
His Son to be its Saviour. It is not certain that any 
person loses this germ so long as he draws breath. 
It is sung and believed and taught by all Christians 

that 

" While the lamp holds out to burn, 

The vilest sinner may return." 

Saint Paul was once " the chief of sinners;" John 
Bunyan was once a profane and godless wretch ; yet 
they became stars of the first magnitude. And it is 
not reasonable to suppose that God will permit any 
slip of spiritual life, capable of being cultured into 
such foliage and fruit, to perish. We are persuaded 
that if He can, He will train all His sons and 
daughters so as to make them diadems in His crown 



110 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

of glory. We know not the length and strength of 
God's saving power ; and we dare not affirm that He 
cannot save even the lowest and worst of His chil- 
dren. " Our God is a God of salvation, and unto 
Him belong the issues of death." 

3. Immortal means " not mortal, not liable to die." 
An immortal being cannot die. Man is the offspring 
of the immortal God, and by heredity partakes the 
immortal nature of his Father. The essence of our 
souls is divine, — is of God ; and hence it can no 
more perish than He can perish. Moreover, all souls 
^are essentially alike. If some are mortal, all are ; if 
some are immortal, all are. Hence not only saints 
but sinners will certainly live forever. 

4. The doctrine of conditional immortality cannot 
therefore be true, or have an}' real support in the 
Bible rightly understood. The Scriptures are mainly 
devoted to affairs in this world ; and the destruction 
of which it speaks is a thing of earth, a change of 
material forms. For example, the wicked antedilu- 
vians were destroyed by a deluge. Their destruction 
as inhabitants of earth was complete and entire. No 
one of them was ever seen again in human shape. 
But the water did not drown their souls. There is 
no proof, no hint, that their spirits were anni- 
hilated. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. As 
cities, they vanished from the face of the earth. So, 
too, Babylon, Nineveh, and all the ancient nations 
were destroyed ; but we are not, in a solitary text, 



A NNIH1LA TION. Ill 

informed that the spirits of these wicked people were 
or were to be annihilated. The writers of the Old 
Testament did not realize that man is an immortal 
being ; and hence to them the death and dissolution 
of the material body seemed the final end, and they 
sometimes called it destruction. In the Revised Ver- 
sion, however, destruction is sometimes expressed by 
a softer word. 1 The New Testament writers followed 
the style of the Prophets, using the word destruction 
in the sense of ruin, overthrow, or death. Jesus 
and his Apostles believed in immortality ; but their 
name for the undying part of man was spirit, an en- 
tity tinlike the soul. The body was one thing, the 
soul another, the spirit another. Hence Saint Paul 
said (1 Thess. v. 23) : "I pray God your whole 
spirit and soul and bod} T be preserved blameless ; " 
(Heb. iv. 12) " The word of God is sharper than any 
two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asun- 
der of soul and spirit." The body and soul could 
die, could be destro}'ed, but not the spirit. Spir- 
itual beings existed without material bodies. The 
spiritual man, raised to a higher sphere, and clothed 
with a spiritual body, would live on forever. There 
is no record that any spirit ever died or was de- 
stroyed, or ever is to be destroj~ed. The bod} 7 and 
soul ma} r peacefully pass away in a ripe old age, or 
in youth or middle age be violently slain, or miserably 
perish in some loathsome Gehenna. 

1 " Calamity," —Job xxi. 30. 



112 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

The lesson taught in the text at the head of this 
chanter is obvious. There is a right way to live, 
love, eat, drink, and act ; and those who follow this 
right way are the righteous, and they are compara- 
tively safe, prosperous, and happy. This is the will 
and law of God. Thus are they preserved. Those 
who do not live in this right way are the wicked ; and 
they are always in imminent danger of disease, of 
accident, of violence, and of premature death ; in 
other words, of being destroyed. The lesson is for 
us and for all. " Let us take due notice, and govern 
ourselves accordingly." He that would be preserved 
from all evil must "fear God and keep His com- 
mandments." 



UNFORGIVEN. 113 



XI. 

UNFOEGIVEN. 

" Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be 
forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." — 
Matt. xii. 32. 

T T is not our business to take care of God. To 
feast Him with praise, to gratif}* Him with prayers, 
to prevent Him from being grieved, to appease His 
anger, to render Him happ % y, to add to His glory, — 
is not our duty. He can and He does take care of 
Himself. Being infinite, He is ever perfectly serene, 
happy, and glorious. The conduct of man, good or 
bad, no more affects Him than the movements of 
animalculse in a drop of water affect the scientist 
who looks at them through a microscope. Ancient 
wise men ascribed all phenomena, both the pleasant 
and the terrible, to God ; and they were right ; 
but the manifestations of grief, anger, wrath, and 
vengeance which they imagined came from Him, 
were merely the result of their imperfect sight and 
reason. He changes not. His laws and ways 
change not. They adapt themselves to all con- 
tingencies, — sometimes in gentleness, sometimes in 
awful power. In talking of sin and forgiveness, we 

8 



114 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

may therefore leave God, so far as any change in 
His feelings and actions are concerned, entirely out 
of consideration ; and as the text does not contain 
His name, or refer to Him as an actor or factor in 
the matter of forgiveness, we shall not attempt to 
bring Him into the account. 

Sin is a transgression of law ; a stepping over, a 
going beyond, an act contrary to the eternal law of 
right. Those who transgress the law unwittingly, 
make a bad blunder ; those who knowingly and 
wilfully disobey it, sin. It is said there is a vast 
amount of sin committed every day ; and this is 
without doubt true ; but we should not indulge in 
morbid anxiety about our unknown sins. So far as 
we can judge, there are many people, and among them 
some who are not accounted pious, that commit very 
little sin, — that pass days, and sometimes weeks, 
without a stain of iniquit}'. The}' mean to be, and 
are, honest, kind, useful members of society ; and 
the}' have no reason to be anxious about their own 
forgiveness or punishment. But sin is committed b} r 
most people ; and the act is invariabl}' followed by a 
result called punishment. It is as if a loaded wagon 
were at once hitched to the sinner, which he is 
compelled to draw with him wherever he goes. It is 
a load of shame, fear, regret, remorse, and other 
evils ; and every fresh sin adds to its magnitude and 
weight. Great sinners are obliged to take with them 
everv where an enormous burden of painful results. 



UNFORGIVEN. 115 

Forgiveness by some is supposed to be unharness- 
ing the sinner or cutting the traces, that he may be 
freed from his burden ; but this is not a correct idea. 
The traces are harder than steel, and nothing short 
of a miracle can unfasten the harness. For example, 
a person may sin by wasting his time in idleness 
and folly ; and the precious da} T s and opportunities 
thus gone, not even God can bring them back. 
They are lost beyond recall ; and the memory of 
their loss must ever be an unpleasant weight on 
the mind. An early acquaintance of ours became 
intemperate, and in a drunken frolic broke one of 
his legs. His blood being poisoned by the fiery 
beverage he drank, gangrene set in, and the limb 
had to be amputated. This was the result of, the 
punishment for, his sinful habit ; and no kind or 
amount of forgiveness could restore that lost leg. 
Another intemperate man in a drunken brawl lost 
an eye. This was a part of his punishment. He 
repented, reformed, became pious, and believed 
himself forgiven ; but sight was not restored to his 
blind e}'e. Nor does forgiveness restore to health 
the man whose constitution has been broken clown 
by his vices, nor cleanse the pages of memory that 
are blackened by the record of his evil deeds. In 
every Instance the traces hold, and the sinner is 
obliged to drag the heavy load of bitter results on 
through life, death, and perhaps beyond. 

We can forgive, but not forget. We suppose 



116 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Paul remembers to this hour that he cruelly perse- 
cuted the unoffending Christians. Is the remem- 
brance pleasant to him? We suppose Cain can still 
remember how he murdered Abel ; and when he 
thinks of it, does not the old guilty mark still come 
to his brow? Forgiveness does not change wrong 
into right. In the parable, the good father forgave 
his prodigal son ; but this did not bring back the 
lost time and misspent money, did not neutralize 
the encouragement his son had given to other sin- 
ners, or prove that he had been a good bo}\ The 
whole thing was still bad and black. When a man 
speaks against the Holy Ghost, the speech and the 
feeling that prompted it go into the book of the 
Recording Angel, to be condemned as bad, for- 
ever. 

What then is forgiveness? Our answer is, — it is 
reconciliation ; it is willingness to drag the load ; it 
is the injured and the injurer meeting in friend- 
ship ; it is the natural and inevitable result of repent- 
ance and reformation. The process is simple: the 
offender ceases to offend ; and the offended party, 
if human, begins to suspect that he himself may 
have been too exacting and perhaps mistaken. The 
feelings of each begin to soften. Gradually the 
parties approach and wipe out the old score ; and 
finally a reconciliation alike honorable and pleasant 
to both takes place. And there is J03' in heaven 
among the angels. If a person sins against his own 



UNFORGIVEN. 117 

soul or better judgment, the path to forgiveness is 
the same ; and when our hearts condemn us not, 
then we are at peace with God. In this way all 
kinds of sin and blasphemy, save one, may be for- 
given. What is that one? Is it a sin that you or 
I may have committed? Is it that blasphemous 
oath, that harsh speech, that deception, fraud, or 
crime, of which we may have been guilty? We hope 
not ; for we do not want to grow old and die with 
either an unforgiven or an unforgiving spirit. What 
is the unpardonable sin? 

There has been much speculation and many dif- 
ferent opinions respecting this sin ; and now and then 
a person imagines himself guilt}' of it and becomes 
insane. It may be difficult to decide exactly what 
Jesus meant, though his statement is very explicit. 
In Mark's Gospel it is intimated that the Saviour 
uttered these words because the Jews said he had an 
unclean spirit ; and it is generally agreed by candid 
students of the Bible that the particular sin alluded 
to at the time was the blasphemous statement that 
the Son of God c; cast out devils by [the aid of] 
Beelzebub, the prince of devils." Those who said 
this, knew better ; knew it was a malicious calumny 
against the best man of the age. Hence the black- 
ness of this sin. Those who were guilty of it were 
base and vile enough for any crime. But that 
bigoted age has passed away, and no one in our day 
says or imagines that Jesus was aided by the prince 



118 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

of devils. Either then the unpardonable sin is no 
longer committed, or we must attach a broader 
meaning to the language of the Master. We prefer 
the latter alternative. Human nature has not 
changed ; and the same feelings indulged by the 
ancient enemies of Jesus are possible now. Hence 
some, perhaps many, in our da}' may have the 
guilt, though the}' do not utter the wicked words, of 
the unpardonable sin. Further, the Holy Spirit was 
not, and is not, a visible person to speak against. 
Instead, it is a (or the) Divine spirit that communes 
with man's spirit, and makes known unto him what 
is true and right. It is, as an Apostle said, " the 
Spirit witnessing with our spirit." It comes to all, 
and teaches all to do right. Whenever, therefore, a 
person acts contrary to the teaching of that Spirit, — 
or, in other words, acts contrary to his own light and 
knowledge, — he sins against the Holy Ghost. In this 
view of the case, — and we believe it the true one, — 
nearly all sins are sins against the Holy Ghost, and 
are not to be forgiven. What then? Is the door of 
mercy shut forever? Is there no hope for the 
wicked? Are we to tell dying sinners that they have 
committed the unpardonable sin, and that therefore 
they cannot be happy in this world or the world to 
come? For such persons, is repentance, prayer, 
faith, of no avail? By no means. There are good 
reasons for believing that there is a glorious future 
possible for all. 



UNFORGIVEN. 119 

The frightful idea that any sinner can be beyond 
the reach of mercy is contrary to the spirit of the 
Bible and the Christian Church. Isaiah said, 
" Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as 
white as snow." John the Baptist said, "Behold the 
Lamb of God that taketb away the sin of the world." 
Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Clergy- 
men of all denominations gloiy in saying, "Grace 
is free and infinite. Whosoever will, may drink the 
water of life freely." Christ gave himself, a ransom 
for all. The invitation is given, the promise made 
to all. All can repent, pray, and be blessed, how- 
ever greatly the}' may have transgressed. 

The writers of the New Testament sometimes ap- 
pear to compare things by making positive opposite 
statements ; for example, " Lay not up treasures on 
earth, but in heaven. . . . Labor not for the meat that 
perisheth, but for that which endure th unto eternal 
life." This is generally understood to mean, Let 
temporal affairs not be neglected, but made subor- 
dinate to spiritual interests. Paul said, "lam not 
sent to baptize, but to preach the Gospel," mean- 
ing that in his ministry baptism was not so impor- 
tant as preaching. Perhaps Jesus onh' meant to 
affirm that the sin against the H0I3- Ghost was not 
so easily and readily forgiven as other sins ; leaving 
a hope that at last it too might be pardoned. It is 
quite certain that the usus loqiiendi of that age and 



120 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

people does permit this interpretation. The anti- 
Christian Jews are not 3-et forgiven. 

It is not certain that the phrase ".world to come ,, 
means the resurrection state. That is not coming to 
us ; we are going to it. The Greek word aion, 
translated toorld, literally and generally means age ; 
and it is so rendered in the margin of the Revised 
Version. Whether sin may or may not be forgiven 
in the future life, to our mind Jesus simply said, The 
sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven, 
"neither in this age," — the Jewish, — "neither in 
the age to come," — the Christian. Neither the Law 
nor the Gospel makes provision for its forgiveness. 
There is no allusion to anything bej'ond this earth 
life. Possibly, " over the river," the stains of earth 
may all at last be washed away b\ T the infinite grace. 

Saint Mark reports Jesus as saying, He that sins 
against the Holy Ghost "hath never forgiveness, 
but is in danger of eternal damnation." The phrase 
"in danger of" does not imply certainty, but un- 
certainty. He may escape. If one escapes, all 
maj\ There is certainly some reason to hope. Be- 
sides, the best scholars now generally agree in the 
opinion that aionios* the Greek word here rendered 
eternal, does not necessarily mean endless duration. 
It may here indicate a long time, — time indefinite. 
And this rendering is in accordance with both facts 
and philosophy. He who sins against his highest 
convictions of right, sins against his own light and 



UNFORGIVEN. 121 

knowledge, is a hardened sinner, and is in danger 
of going on in sin, of growing worse, and remaining 
in condemnation. The Jews who crucified Jesus did 
remain in sin until the}' were miserably destroyed in 
the awful downfall of their nation. 

No sinner's prospect is cheerful. Do what he 
may, he must still drag on his wagon-load of misery, 
because it is the result of his evil doing ; and God 
will not, cannot, unharness him, or cut the traces 
that unite cause and effect. One hope remains, — 
the unforgiven sinner, by Divine assistance, may 
; ' cease to do evil and learn to do good ; " and the 
happiness resulting from his good deeds ma}- more 
than counterbalance the unhappiness caused by the 
memory of past misdeeds ; and in the strength of a 
virtuous life the yoke may become so easy, and the 
burden so light, as not to be noticed. In the sunny 
influences of eternal heaven, the sins and sorrows of 
earth may dwindle to a point, and cease to annoy. 
When we call to mind the sad facts that many peo- 
ple are badly born and bred, that ignorance and temp- 
tation abound, and that the longest earthly life is 
comparatively short, we are inclined to pit}' rather 
than to condemn the sinful ; and the sweet hope 
will come, that some time in the long hereafter a 
Divine voice will say to all who have been wicked : 
"Neither do I condemn thee. Go, sin no more, 
love much, and be forever happy." 



122 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



XII. 

THE FEARFUL HANDS OF GOD. 

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" 
— Heb. x. 31. 

TPHIS is a dark saying, and hard to be under- 
stood. While reading it, one can hardly re- 
frain from wishing either that the statement was 
more definite or that he was endowed with more 
wisdom. Let us first try not to misunderstand its 
meaning. Why is it a fearful thing to fall into the 
hands of God? Is it far to fall? Are His hands so 
hard as to bruise, so hot as to burn, or so cold as 
to freeze, those who fall into them? Is it better, 
safer, more pleasant, less dangerous, to be out of 
His hands than in them? How happen some to be 
out of His hands, and some in them? In which 
place are we ? What causes any one to have this 
fearful fall? These and similar questions curiosity 
will ask, and reason should try honestly to answer. 

It would not be difficult for an unscrupulous man 
of talents to elaborate from this text an alarming 
and effective discourse. He might urge with much 
apparent plausibilit}', and prove by fragments of 
Scripture, that it is a fearful thing for the wicked 



THE FEARFUL HANDS OF GOD. 123 

to fall into the hands of God : (1) Because He " is 
angry with the wicked ; " and it is not pleasant or 
safe to be in the hands of any angry person, human 
or superhuman. Anger is a kind of mania; and a 
maniac is alwaj's dangerous. (2) Because God's 
anger, it is said, sometimes intensifies into hot, 
fierce, terrible wrath against evil-doers ; and at such 
times it would be fearfully dangerous to fall into 
His hands. (3) Because He has threatened to pun- 
ish with great severity all who persist in committing 
sin ; and He always keeps His word, in the letter and 
the spirit ; (4) Because He has prepared a great, 
dark, bottomless pit, in which there is a frightful 
lake of sulphurous fire, into which He will cast the 
finally impenitent, and there cause them to be tor- 
mented, day and night, forever and ever. (5) Be- 
cause He is almighty, and therefore can do all this 
with ease ; and much more in the same aw r ful line. 

Taking the words and phrases of the Bible in their 
literal sense, it is eas} T to preach in this way, and 
thus terrify the ignorant and the sinful. Many ser- 
mons of this kind have been delivered, and indirectly 
have possibly clone some good ; but the} 7 are not in 
harmony with reason or the spirit of revelation, and 
their general effect cannot therefore be good. The 
Bible is an Oriental book, and full of Oriental im- 
agery ; and we must spiritualize the figurative lan- 
guage, or fail to get its meaning. For example, 
the phrase " in the hands of God " is not equiva- 



124 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

lent to an assertion that He has hands like ours ; 
instead, it simply means under the control of God 
and at His disposal. All men, good and bad, are 
in this condition, and therefore in His hands. He 
is omnipresent, all-wise, and alinightj' ; and hence 
no one can get away from Him, or outwit Him, or 
overmaster Him. Between us and Him there is 
absolutely no barrier, no distance. He is above all, 
through all, and in all. In Him we live, move, and 
are. Each human being can truly say with the 
Psalmist : " If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there : 
if I make my bed in hell [Sheol], Thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea ; even there shall Thj r 
hand lead me, and Thy right hand hold me." He is 
the omnipresent and absolute Ruler of the universe ; 
and all beings and things are under His control and 
at His disposal. Hence all talk about falling into 
His hands, either as a lapse through space or a 
change in potential relation, in a literal sense is 
grossly absurd. 

But were it possible in any way literallj T to be out 
of God's hands, — that is, outside of Him and His 
influence, — remaining out would be fearful, and 
getting in exceedingly desirable. In His hands is 
perfect security. So long as a person is there, no 
foe can harm him, no evil befall him, without the 
Divine permission ; and as the Almighty is perfectly 
kind, even to those who have done wrong, the best 



THE FEARFUL HANDS OF GOD. 125 

things possible will be meted out to all who are in 
His paternal keeping. This is so manifest and so 
generally believed, that the timid, the unfortunate, 
and those in peril instinctively look and pray to 
Him for deliverance and protection. Even the most 
depraved, when, like the prodigal son in the parable, 
they come to themselves and regain the use of right 
reason, say : " Why do I stay here and starve, while 
in my Father's house there is bread enough and to 
spare ? I will arise and go home ; for there I shall 
find shelter and protection, and possibly forgiveness 
and affection." Millions of sinners have thus sought 
God, though He was all the time with them. In 
this view of the case, it is not fearful but blessed to 
get into the conscious presence and keeping of the 
living God. It is written, " The fool hath said in 
his heart, There is no God ; " and he has good reason 
to feel that it is a fearful thing to be in the cold, 
hard hands of blind chance and pitiless law. But if 
he had sense enough to be made to realize that 
there is a living God whose nature is love, his first 
wish would be, to be in and remain in His kind care 
and keeping. 

Some people may think it is a fearful thing to fall 
into the hands of God to be punished, because He 
can punish so long and so severely ; but this was 
not the opinion of King David, the sweet singer of 
Israel. When he had sinned in taking the census 
of his nation, and was to be punished by a national 



126 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

calamity, and the choice was given him, either to fall 
into the hands of hostile men and suffer repeated 
defeat in battle, or to fall into the hands of Nature 
and shrivel in the deadly presence of famine as a 
result of scanty harvests, or to fall into the hands of 
God and have the land smitten with the pestilence 
that cuts down small and great, he at once said, 
" Let me fall into the hands of God." His choice 
was wise. God is ever calm, just, and merciful. 
He knows exactly how much punishment is deserved 
and needed, and He never inflicts more or less ; 
hence it is safest to fall into His hands for correc- 
tion. Moreover, at the time of its infliction, His 
chastisement ma} T seem veiy grievous and hard to 
endure; " nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the 
peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which 
are exercised thereby." 

Thus far we have not attempted to show what is 
meant by its being " a fearful thing to fall into the 
hands of the living God ; " and we are not positive 
that we know precisely what the writer did mean by 
this strange statement. There are, however, two 
considerations that seem to throw some light on this 
dark subject : — 

1. By a law that governs human nature, every- 
thing that a person looks at is tinged with the hue of 
his own mind, character, and feelings ; just as a col- 
ored lens makes everything seen through it appear 
colored. To the pure all things seem pure; while 



THE FEARFUL HANDS OF GOD. 127 

to the defiled and disobedient nothing seems pure. 
To the unhealthy, all nature seems wan and sickly ; 
to the timid, danger seems lurking on every side ; to 
the contentious, foes seem numerous ; to the inno- 
cent and loving, the whole world is a paradise. 
In accord with the working of this law, it is said 
(Ps. xviii. 25, 26, Noyes's translation): " To the 
merciful Thou showest Thyself merciful ; to the up- 
right Thou showest Thyself upright ; to the pure 
Thou showest Thyself pure ; and to the perverse 
Thou show r est Thyself perverse." And there can be 
no doubt that to the sinful God showeth Himself, or 
seems distant, unloving, angry, and ready to punish 
severely ; and this mental illusion is a part of their 
punishment. The wicked feel that they are absent 
from God, and that so long as He and the}' are sep- 
arate the}' are comparatively safe. To their darkened 
minds, going to Him would be going to be chastised 
severely ; and that is a fearful thing to do and to 
suffer. It is natural and right for the guilty to have 
these fears and feelings ; and it was proper for the 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews to remind them 
of this sad condition of all transgressors. The state- 
ment might lead some men to be more circumspect, 
and others to repentance. In this light, the text is 
"founded on fact," and is worthy of an apostle's 
pen. 

2. The second consideration is suggested by the 
context, which reads: "He that despised Moses' 



128 THROUGH THE SHADOWS, 

law died without mercy," by being burned or stoned 
to death. "Of how much sorer punishment, sup- 
pose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trod- 
den under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the 
blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an 
unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of 
grace? For we know Him that hath said, I will rec- 
ompense, saith the Lord. ... It is a fearful thing to 
fall into the hands of the living God." The evident 
meaning is : God can and does punish the guilty 
more severely than man can. Man can burn, stone, 
behead, a criminal ; God can inflict sorer punishment. 
But what is more fearful than a violent death ? Tor- 
ment by fire in hell might be worse ; but is there 
nothing else ? We answer : The sting, the mental 
agony, that sin gives to the dying hour is much more 
fearful than death. A consciousness of guilt brings 
a misery to which the material bodj' is a stranger. 
The natural death of the aged, and all whose bod- 
ies are wasted by disease or mangled b}' accident, 
is not a punishment, but a relief, a blessing. To a 
sinful soul, the sting of a guilty conscience, the bur- 
den of regret and remorse, and the dread of the 
future are fearful penalties ; and these God inflicts 
on the wicked, even in the solemn hour of their 
dissolution. 

There are two things more fearful than falling into 
the hands of God : one is, to be in the cruel, enslav- 
ing; hands of sin ; and the other is, to be in the cold, 



THE FEARFUL HANDS OF GOD. 129 

clammy hands of ignorance. The virtuous and well- 
informed can face death with calm composure. Only 
to the sinful, ignorant, and unbelieving is death the 
king of terrors, or God an apparent enemy. God is 
good ; let us not fear His tender hands. His rod of 
correction is a healing wand ; may it touch us when 
we err, and reach all the guilty ! And let us not for- 
get the fundamental truth of revelation, that we 
and all souls are and ever shall be in the hands, 
in the kind, safe keeping, of the Infinite Love. 



9 



130 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



: xiii. 

NOT BORN AGAIN. 

"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of 
God." — John iii. 3. 

HP HIS is a plain statement of an important fact. 
The kingdom of God must be the realm, and the 
only realm, of divine purity, love, and blessedness ; 
and no one can enter or even see this heavenly king- 
dom unless he has been born again. All others 
must remain outside and afar off. This seems to us 
one of the greatest deprivations and misfortunes 
imaginable. In view of these momentous facts, the 
questions, Have we been born again ? If not, how can 
we be born again? and is it probable that we ever 
shall be ? arise and assume a thrilling interest. The 
answers to these questions, where so much is at stake, 
ought to be obvious to even the dullest comprehen- 
sion ; but while looking for them we meet many 
doubts and difficulties. 

Nicodemus, the gentleman to whom Jesus was 
speaking when he uttered these words, was, without 
doubt, a learned, honest, candid, devout rabbi. He 
firmly believed in God, and worshipped Him in the 



NOT BORN AGAIN. 131 

way prescribed in the ritual of Moses. He recognized 
in Christ 4i a teacher come from God," and believed in 
him as far as he knew him. But he desired to know 
more ; and hence, in the hush of the evening, after 
most people had retired to rest, he went to Jesus to 
have a quiet, serious talk. He was a very excellent 
man ; yet Jesus told him, at the outset, that he, even 
he, must be born again or he could not see the king- 
dom of God. If so good and pious a man needed a 
new birth, then no amount of virtue or grace in us is 
any indication that we have been born again. Be- 
lieve and hope as we may, a grave doubt whether 
we have had the great change of regeneration and 
rebirth must ever shadow the minds of even the best 
of us. 

Birth is a sudden and radical change in the con- 
dition, feelings, opportunities, and activities of the 
creature born. It is a rapid transition from a state 
of comparative quiet, unconscious indifference, to a 
state or condition exactly opposite, — to freedom, 
activity, want, and new feelings. But since arriving 
at the age of mature reflection, no one of us is con- 
scious of having passed through such a new-birth 
change. By the slow processes of growth and culture 
our powers have increased, our opinions changed, our 
views broadened, our feelings been modified; }'et in 
every essential respect we have remained the same. 
Our appetites, passions, conscience, heart, traits of char- 
acter, peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, have not altered. 



132 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

We trust that with advancing years and the incoming 
of more light we have slowly grown wiser and better ; 
but we must candidly confess that so far as we can 
remember, we have never experienced any change 
that in any way resembled a new birth. We cannot 
recall the time when we did not respect right and 
despise wrong, love happiness and loathe misery, 
feel at times weak and desire assistance, realize that 
we had in some instances done wrong and long to be 
forgiven. Each of us has swept the entire scale of 
feeling from blue depression to jubilant joy ; but we 
have no proof that we have been born again. What 
ought we to do? 

We suppose all Christians are agreed in the opin- 
ion that the phrases u born again" and " born of 
God " have one and the same meaning. He that is 
born again is born of God ; and he that is born of 
God is born again. It is written (1 John v. 18) : 
" Whosoever is born of God sinneth not." We know 
that we do occasionally sin ; hence we are compelled 
to believe that we have not been born of God, — 
have not been born again ; and we see no way to 
avoid this humiliating conclusion. And it is an 
aggravating bitterness in our cup of humiliation that 
we cannot help ourselves in this matter, and that we 
may never be born again. Birth is a change in which 
the creature born is entirely passive. The unborn 
move only when and as they are moved upon. They 
are "brought forth." This fact is recognized in the 



NOT BORN AGAIN, 133 

passive predicate " be born again." There is no 
active voice of the verb born. We cannot born our- 
selves. We may long and pray for the new birth, 
but we can do nothing about it. When, if ever, the 
time is ripe and God wills, parturition will take 
place, and we shall enter the new stage of existence 
and see the kingdom of God. Till then, all we can 
do is to wait and hope. We have now made a frank 
and full confession of our condition in regard to a 
new birth, — we have not been born again ; and it 
seems to us that even evangelical Christians must 
admit that we have written "the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth." But this truth 
has a wide application. All men, whether evangeli- 
cal or unevangelical, are in the same embryonic con- 
dition, — not born again. The evidence is conclusive. 
Very few persons of culture, capable of comprehend- 
ing mental phenomena, can call to mind any change 
in themselves worthy the name of " born again ; " 
and the testimon} T of the ignorant is of little value. 
But more than this, it is an old and true statement 
that "no man liveth and sinneth not." Judging 
them hy their fruits and by their own public confes- 
sions, nearly all professed Christians and church- 
members are still sinners, and hence have not been 
born of God, — not been born again; and although 
the glorious privilege of seeing and entering the 
Divine kingdom is contingent, they can do nothing 
to bring about their new birth and secure the blessing. 



134 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

The truth is, we are all in the same boat, and have 
no power to steer it through the birth-strait. 

In this condition of affairs, it seems the duty of all 
Christians to seek some explanation of the words of 
Jesus that will free us from these difficulties and 
open the door of hope, and at the same time be in 
harmony with the Scriptures and the right use of 
reason ; and it seems to us that this is not a hard 
task. The light breaks on our mind in this way : 
there are two meanings to the phrase "born again," 
— a lower and a higher meaning. 

First, the lower or common meaning, in the age of 
Jesus and the Apostles. The Jews at that time 
were animated by a missionary spirit. The} r desired 
to convert the Gentiles to the Mosaic religion. In 
Scripture language, they u compassed land and sea 
to make proselytes." When, as occasionally hap- 
pened, a Gentile was converted to Judaism, he was 
baptized, symbolically to wash off his stains of sin 
and error ; and was then said, in Oriental style, to 
be born again, — that is, born into the Mosaic reli- 
gion and church. In that age the expression was 
in common use, and well understood b}- everybody. 
Nicodemus had probably uttered the words hun- 
dreds of times. What puzzled him was that Jesus 
should say that he, a born and bred Jew, a devout 
believer in the law and its ordinances, needed to 
be born again. He was already- in the theocratic 
kingdom, and was expecting that its rightful king, 



NOT BORN AGAIN 135 

the promised Messiah, would soon come and as- 
cend its throne. How could a man like him, full 
grown in the true faith, have a new birth? He 
needed, and we need, a different and higher defini- 
tion of the phrase than mere conversion. A glance 
at the opinions and feelings of the Jews at that time 
will disclose this higher meaning. 

Misled by the figurative language of the Old Tes- 
tament, they believed that a man of divine nature 
and ability was about to come, assume the office of 
king, rouse the nation to arms, lead them to battle, 
drive out the detested Romans, and establish a king- 
dom that would rule and bless all mankind and 
make Jerusalem the capital of the world. Nicocle- 
mus without doubt had this cheering belief: and 
having heard much of the miracles and wonderful 
discourses of Jesus, he may have thought him to 
be the Christ. To satisfy himself, he sought and 
obtained a private interview. In answer to his first 
questioning remark, Jesus said, " Except a man 
[j'ourself, for example] be born again, he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." The rabbi mused. " Why 
not? Have I not eyes? Could I not see Israel's 
glorious king in command of our army, the vic- 
torious battles, the Roman cohorts driven from Pal- 
estine, and the kingdom of David and Solomon 
re-established in more than its ancient grandeur ? I, 
a rabbi and a ruler in Israel?" Yes, if such a phe- 
nomenon should occur ; but nothing of the kind was 



136 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

to take place. Jesus explained : " By l born again' 
I mean ' born of the spirit, born from above, born 
of God, entering into spiritual life.' The Christ is to 
be a spiritual king ; the kingdom of God, a spiritual 
kingdom ; and hence it can be seen only by the eyes 
of a spiritual being. You, even you, Nicodemus, 
must become more spiritually minded, or not perceive 
the great religious regime about to be inaugurated." 

This, without a shadow of doubt in our mind, was 
the exact meaning of the Saviour ; and this meaning 
is in harmony with the drift of the New Testament. 
John the Baptist said, "The kingdom of heaven is 
at hand." On one occasion Jesus said to those 
around him, " The kingdom of God is within you," 
in your midst, even now. Saint Paul said, u The 
kingdom of God is not meat and drink [is not an 
earthly realm], but righteousness, peace, and joy in 
the Holy Spirit." Saint John says (1 John v. 1) : 
" Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born 
of God," and of course sees the Divine kingdom. 
Nicodemus did not believe this, and hence he had 
not been born again. The kingdom of God, we 
believe, is the Christian dispensation, — the regime 
of grace on earth, which, though small at the outset, 
is destined to increase and spread until it leavens 
the entire human race, and all souls, from the great- 
est to the least, know and love God. 

Admitting this natural and Scriptural interpreta- 
tion of what Jesus said, it is evident that he did not 



NOT BORN AGAIN. 137 

allude to the after-death condition of souls, nor to a 
change needful to prepare the rabbi to enter heaven 
in the next stage of existence. Instead, he spoke 
of affairs pertaining to earth only ; and he uttered 
a truth as important and pertinent here and now 
as there and then, — no selfish, sinful, unspiritual, 
animal man can enter, see, or appreciate God's 
pure, blessed Gospel kingdom, on earth or anywhere 
else, until he is born of the Spirit and has opened 
his spiritual eyes. Hence arises the great need of 
preaching and teaching, of Christian culture, to open 
men's soul-eyes, and thus "to turn them from dark- 
ness to light, and from the power of Satan unto 
God," that they may have righteousness, peace, and 
joy in the Holy Spirit. 

Although the text under review was not spoken 
to inculcate, yet it forcibly suggests, a still higher 
and grander thought. fci Born again " implies a first 
and a second birth. B} T our first birth we entered 
into this world ; by our second birth, through death 
and the resurrection, we shall enter another world ; 
and the details of the two births are very much 
alike. In each case the person exists before he is 
born. In every human being there is an immortal 
embryo. The unborn possess all the organs and 
faculties required in the next stage of existence. 
Even now around our souls are folded the wings 
of an angel, and in our hearts seraphic love is en- 
shrined. Birth is entrance into a higher sphere ; 



138 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

and by the second birth man enters into the highest 
sphere we can imagine. It is not a change of iden- 
tity or personality, but entrance into a realm where 
many and great changes are imminent and certain. 
Especial^ will our second birth introduce us into 
a realm of enlarged freedom and opportunity for 
growth in grace and knowledge. We shall be freed 
from the animal body, — the instigator and instru- 
ment of sin ; freed from the needs and pains of our 
mortal forms ; freed from the cares and anxieties 
incident to our earthly life ; free to go where we 
please, and to labor without being weaiy, to enjoy 
without being satiated ; free to commune with angels 
and glorified spirits ; and, with keener perceptions 
and clearer intellect, free to learn, to improve, and 
to go on to perfection. The fulness of all this will 
not come at the instant of our second birth, for we 
shall then be merely immortal babes ; but it will 
come gradually, as the result of growth and evolu- 
tion, in the realm where there is neither marrying nor 

7 J O 

sexual complications, no tears or fears, no death or 
pain, but light, love, beauty, and harmony forever. 

In this sublime view of the subject, no person is 
really born again until the soul leaves the material 
bod}\ But by faith in God, in Christ, in immor- 
tality, we ma} T even here enter into a realizing con- 
sciousness of our future destiny, and heaven begin 
below. God and heaven are as near us now as they 
ever will be ; but until the great day of revelation 



NOT BORN AGAIN. 139 

consequent on our actual new birth, we are obliged 
to ' ' walk by faith and not by sight." Yet we can 
improve our spiritual condition. u Faith comes b}' 
hearing " or reading the Word of God, by deep medi- 
tation, and in answer to the prayer, " Lord, increase 
our faith." In due time we shall all be born again, 
and see and enter the kingdom of God. 



140 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



XIV. 

EESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

" The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall 
hear his voice, and shall come forth ; they that have done good, 
unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the 
resurrection of damnation." — John v. 28, 29. 

^PHESE words are by many supposed very clearly 
to set forth the prevalent evangelical idea of 
the final destiny of the human race. Christ is to 
come again as a person, and summon the dead to 
judgment ; a general resurrection of both the just and 
the unjust will ensue ; a separation of the vast throng 
into two dissimilar portions will take place, — one 
portion, t4 the}' that have done good," will enter the 
higher life, and the other portion, 4; they that have 
done evil," will receive damnation, — and the drama 
of earth and man will end. These solemn, startling 
statements, it is said, came from the lips of Jesus, 
the teacher sent from Heaven to give us instruction ; 
and it becomes us to hear, believe, shudder, and try 
to do good enough to secure eternal life. The Ian- 
guage is apparent^ definite and explicit; but in a 
matter of such tremendous importance, we want to 
be sure, if possible, of the exact meaning of eveiy 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION, 141 

word. Is the general view of the passage, as above 
stated, correct ? Is the translation perfect ? Does the 
context throw any light on the subject? What is 
the exact meaning, in this statement, of the words 
hour, voice, dead, graves, resurrection, life, and 
damnation? Is the passage to be regarded as a 
literal account of actual events that are to transpire? 
Let us make a candid and thorough investigation. 

" The hour is coming, in the which all that are in 
the graves shall hear his voice." The earth is twenty- 
five thousand miles in circumference, and there are 
graves in eveiy land. Wherever Christ is to stand 
on that great occasion, there will be graves all the 
way from a mile to twelve thousand five hundred 
miles distant ; and a voice that could reach all of 
them would have to be a thousand times more pow- 
erful than the loudest thunder. Is the gentle Jesus 
to utter a shout so enormously loud? Could even 
a blast from Gabriel's trumpet reach so far? At 
twelve thousand miles' distance, could any vocal air- 
wave be perceptible even to the living? It seems im- 
possible. Besides, sound moves only about eleven 
hundred feet in a second ; and it would require 
several hours for a voice uttered in Palestine to reach 
the graves in California and Australia. All in the 
graves will not hear the voice in the same hour, 
unless Christ rapidly visits every part of the earth in 
sixty minutes, constantly shouting as he goes, — a 
supposition that seems very absurd. From these 



142 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

considerations we are compelled to believe that 
neither the voice nor the hour is to be understood 
literally. The hour must be time indefinite ; and 
the voice only a summons. 

" All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, 
and come forth." This cannot be taken literallv. 
A very large number of the bodies of the dead have 
not been buried in graves ; man}' have been burned, 
many engulfed in the sea, mam' left to rot above 
ground, and many devoured by wild beasts and 
cannibals. If only those who have been buried or 
entombed are to hear his voice, a very great mul- 
titude of the dead will not hear it. But if the bodies 
of all who have died during the past six thousand 
years had been buried, very few of them would 
now be in the graves. Unless the dead are em- 
balmed as soon as life leaves the bod}', chemical 
decomposition begins ; and it does not stop until the 
"dust returns to the dust as it was," and the body, 
as an organized form, ceases to exist. If, therefore, 
only those bodies that are in the graves come forth, 
the number will be comparatively small. But all 
the dead are evidently intended ; and hence we are 
obliged to suppose that the word (/raves is used fig- 
uratively for the dead. If so, then the old, ghastly 
notion that grass}' graves are to burst open, and 
bodies long dead are to come up out of them, must be 
abandoned. In fact, no item of the drama so long 
held by many as a reality finds any support in this 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 143 

passage of Scripture. The idea of the second com- 
ing of Christ in a human form, of the mighty voice, 
the graves, the dead bodies, the separation into two 
classes, utterly vanishes. We must find a figurative 
meaning, or the passage remains a mysteiy. 

In addition to these erroneous ideas about the 
passage, one word in it is made misleading by being 
wrongly translated. It is the ominous word damna- 
tion. In Worcester's Quarto Dictionary damnation 
is defined to be " a sentence to the eternal torments 
of hell ; " and this is, without doubt, its popular and 
actual meaning. This is an alarming fact. If Jesus 
uttered a w r ord of such awful import, we and all 
sinners have reason to fea*r and tremble. But did 
he ? We hasten to get the opinion of the wise and 
learned. In Noyes's very excellent translation of 
the New Testament, the phrase reads " resurrection 
of condemnation." In the risen state those who 
have done evil may feel or receive condemnation. 
That is infinitely better than damnation. It is but a 
natural and just retribution. How long the state of 
condemnation will continue is not mentioned. But 
Dr. Noyes, though a ripe scholar and an honest man, 
was a Unitarian, and his belief may have biased his 
judgment. We go therefore to the Revised Version 
of the New Testament. This was made by learned 
evangelical divines ; and it ought to be reliable. To 
our surprise and gratification we find the phrase 
reads "resurrection of judgment ; " and judgment 



144 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

does not mean u a sentence to eternal torments in 
hell." On further investigation, we find that there is 
other good orthodox testimony to the fact that there 
is no word in the Greek New Testament that means 
" damnation." The profane may continue to repeat 
the awful word, and the timid and ignorant to be 
afraid of a doom so frightful ; but it is a great relief 
to us to learn that Jesus never uttered, and the in- 
spired penmen never wrote, a word having this 
meaning. A danger that neither Christ nor his 
Apostles mentioned need not give us alarm. 

Having thus disposed of erroneous interpretations 
and crude notions, we come now to something more 
important and practical*: What did Jesus in this 
statement mean to teach his hearers and us? We 
reply : — 

1. He meant to reaffirm and emphasize the old doc- 
trine that it shall be well with the righteous, " they 
that have done good," and ill with the wicked, (i the}' 
that have done evil." This is a law, a destiny, that 
every person ought to understand. Not belief, or 
profession, or religious rite, insures the blessing, but 
the actual doing of good ; and neglecting to do 
good, doing evil, brings the curse. The "good" 
alluded to is fully set fortlrin the twenty-fifth chap- 
ter of Matthew. It is feeding the hungry, clothing 
the naked, sheltering the stranger, visiting the sick 
and afflicted, — in a word, philanthropy. In earth 
and heaven — by men, angels, and God — these 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 145 

good works are approved, and the doer blessed with 
true divine life. 

2. This is the law, the rule, the result, not for 
some Jews or some Christians, but for all, even u all 
that are in the graves," — that is, the dead. All, 
both the living and the dead, shall hear his voice and 
come forth. But in the Bible " the dead" does not 
always mean " corpses." Bad men are said to be 
" dead in trespasses and sins." Saint John said of 
himself and some other Christians, "We know we 
have passed from death unto life," — not from dead 
bodies to living men, but from unbelief and sin to 
belief and love. Paul wrote to the Ephesians : "You 
who were dead hath he quickened," — that is, raised 
from sluggish indifference to the animating hope, 
love, and joy of the Gospel. But if the word graces 
has an ominous sound, read Ezek. xxxvii. 11-14: 
" Prophesy unto them [the degraded and oppressed 
Jews in captivity], Thus saith the Lord, Behold, 

my people, I will open your graves, and cause 
you to come up out of your graves, and bring 3-011 
into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that 

1 am the Lord." All commentators, so far as we 
know, concur in the opinion that this is figurative 
language. These people were not literal^ dead and 
buried, but ignorant, sinful Hebrew captives in 
Babylonia. And the dead of whom Jesus spoke, 
possibl}', probably, were not coffined dead bodies, 
but persons in the chill shadow of a moral death. 

10 



146 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Even such were to hear the voice of the Son of God 
in the Gospel, and come forth to a new life. 

3. "The resurrection." As the body of a dead man 
" returns to the dust as it was," and its reorganiza- 
tion and reanimation is neither expected nor desired 
by any candid thinker, the resurrection must be a 
change of some other kind. If the spirit were dead, 
its return to life might be called a resurrection ; but 
man's spirit is immortal, and immortal spirits cannot 
die. Ana-stasis, the Greek word for resurrection, 
does not necessarily mean " revitalizing ; " but it does 
mean "standing up, rising up from a sitting or re- 
cumbent posture." It is a result of the volition of 
the living. A resurrection then is a mental change, 
a rising up of the soul from the torpor of evil to a 
consciousness of moral responsibility and of an over- 
ruling Providence and an eternal destiny- It is 
being quickened, being born again, passing from 
animal lethargy to spiritual life. This great change 
may take place before the death of the body ; but if 
not, it must occur at some time. We have the most 
positive assurance that all shall hear his voice ; that 
there is to be a resurrection "both of the just and 
the unjust," and that, " as in Adam all die, even so 
in Christ shall all be made alive." 

4. " The voice of the Son of God." No intelligent 
person now believes that the dead are to be awakened 
into life b} r a mere noise emanating from either a 
mouth or a trumpet. Christ's voice must therefore 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 147 

be, not wavelets of sound, but the sense and spirit of 
what he said or is to say, — in other words, the Gos- 
pel that he preached. " The Gospel is the power of 
God to salvation," • — a power adequate to change the 
living and raise the dead. Christ was then preach- 
ing the Gospel to the Jews ; and the Apostles were 
commanded to go into all the world, and preach it 
to every creature. It is also said that the Saviour 
went and " preached to the spirits in prison," who- 
ever or wherever they were. Eventually, therefore, 
all mankind, the living and the dead, are to hear the 
voice of Christ in the stirring truths of the Gospel, 
and be aroused to a new life. 

5. "The hour [in Greek, ora] is coming, in the 
which." Hour does not always signify a period of 
just sixty minutes ; but time, a space of time, a 
season, time indefinite. Measured by the great 
clock of eternity, whose pendulum is an apparently 
fixed star, and on whose dial, in God's sight, " a 
thousand years are as one day," an hour may be a 
very long period of time. There is no proof that 
by hour Jesus meant a very short space of time. 
On the contrary, it is manifest to us that he referred 
to a then future age of indefinite duration. In effect 
ho said : "A new age, a Christian dispensation, is 
coming, in the long duration of which all, the living 
and the dead, shall hear the voice of the Son of God 
in the thrilling strains of the Gospel, the glad tid- 
ings of great joy which shall be to all people." This 



148 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

true view of the passage is sustained by the context 
(John v. 25) : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, The 
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall 
hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear 
shall live." The resurrection age had alreadv begun. 
The Divine voice was first heard by dead Jews ; 
ultimately it will be heard by all the dead, both Jew 
and Gentile. 

6. " The resurrection," and its sequences. When a 
good man, unacquainted with the Gospel, learns and 
believes that he is the immortal son of the Infinite 
Love, in whose kind care and keeping he is, and is 
to be forever, he enters a new state of existence, 
and partakes of eternal life ; in Scripture phrase, he 
" passes from death to life," and is a new creature, 
is alive in Christ. He feels at peace in God, and is 
animated by love and a joj-ful hope. And these rich 
blessings are not gifts or paj^ments, but the natural 
and inevitable results of his Christian faith. This 
interpretation is sanctioned by the explicit words of 
Jesus (John v. 24) : " He that heareth my word, 
and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting 
life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is 
passed from death to life." When a bad person 
hears and believes the Gospel, he at once realizes 
that he has been injuring himself and others ; that 
he has not been enjoying the good within his reach, 
but adding to the misery and degradation always ex- 
isting in depraved society ; and that without holiness 



RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 149 

lie cannot possess true love, hope, manliness, or hap- 
piness ; and he thus awakes, u comes forth," into 
a new life, — a condition of. shame, condemnation, 
self-contempt. These evils are not punishments in- 
flicted from without, but the natural and inevitable 
results of wrong-doing. In fact, they are blessings 
in disguise. Self-condemnation is the first step in 
genuine repentance, and the first intimation of a 
capacity for improvement. A totally depraved per- 
son could feel no shame and condemn himself for 
no guilt. Condemnation can be felt only by those 
who have done wrong, yet approve of right. And so 
long as shame, regret, and condemnation continue, 
the soul cannot be perfectly happy. 

At this point the passage under consideration 
closes its testimony. How long this pitiable condi- 
tion of the awakened sinner will last, and how, if at 
all, he is delivered from it, are not shown in the text 
or context. But we are not left to conjecture. Sin- 
ners are sometimes saved, and the Gospel relates 
the process. First, the sinner's spiritual eyes are 
opened, and he perceives the beauty of holiness and 
the haggard hatefulness of sin. Then comes the 
sense, the feeling, of shame and condemnation. Then 
come a desire and a determination to lead a better 
life. Then comes a wish, a prayer, for Divine as- 
sistance. Lastly, comes a consciousness of forgive- 
ness. New ideas float into his mind ; the burden 
of the past rolls off and slides away ; and a higher, 



150 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

happier frame of the soul ensues. Something seems 
to say, and perhaps it is the voice of the Son of God : 
" Well, let the past go f it cannot be changed. Your 
Father in heaven still loves you. Hope ; hope on, 
hope ever ! Eternity is before you ; and in all its 
countless years you may be holy and happy. Christ 
came to save such as you ; you are forgiven. Look 
up, look ahead, and rejoice." Thus may those who 
come forth to a resurrection of condemnation be 
saved. 



TEE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 151 






XV. 

THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

" We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ" — 
2 Cor. v. 10. 

T 7t 7E suppose the word all in this passage means 
every human being, — all who lived before the 
birth of Jesus, all who have lived since, and all who 
are yet to be born. Each one of us is included in the 
number, and hence each one of us has a personal 
interest in the affair ; and each one of us ought to 
know what the Bible teaches respecting the great 
and general judgment. A judgment seat is a seat, 
bench, or throne for a judge to occupy. It implies a 
court room or area large enough to accommodate the 
judge and the persons on trial. Christ has or is to 
have such a seat and such a court room ; and to it 
all of us have been or shall be summoned for trial and 
award according to our deeds. We are amenable to 
law, and accountable for our conduct. All this is 
clearly taught in the Scriptures and believed by all 
Christians. 

" We must all appear before the judgment seat of 
Christ j " but where that judgment seat is or is to be, 
when we are to u appear" there, whether all at once 
or in divisions or separately, how long the trial will 



152 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

last, are questions on which there is not a general 
agreement among religious people. Man}' Christians 
have held the idea that the judgment would occupy 
but an hour, and that hour be at the second coming 
of Christ. Then, suddenly, the Judge will descend 
from heaven, the dead be raised and assembled be- 
fore him, the judgment transpire, and the world — 
or at least its present sinful condition — terminate. 
Others are of the opinion that no dramatic scene of 
the kind is ever to take place ; that the second com- 
ing of Christ was a purely spiritual affair which oc- 
curred soon after his ascension ; that his seat is in 
every man's conscience ; that the judgment has been 
going on, everywhere, ail the time, ever since ; and 
that it will go on until the end of time. There are 
good reasons for believing the first-mentioned idea 
wrong, and the second right. 

1. A scenic display seems incompatible with the 
dignity and glory of the world's Redeemer. Eastern 
monarchs did sit on elegant thrones, and trembling 
culprits were brought before them for condemnation ; 
and the scene was well calculated to awe the weak 
and ignorant, and to aggrandize the ambitious and 
selfish king. But for Christ, who promised to be with 
his disciples " alway, even unto the end of the world," 
to come down from heaven to earth, and sit down 
anywhere, even on " a great white throne," and play 
the role of an Oriental tyrant, would not be in har- 
mony with his gentle, saving spirit. The solemn 



THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 153 

spectacle on Calvary was needful and beneficial. It 
sealed in blood the Saviour's mission in the flesh, 
and touched the world's heart with pity, love, admira- 
tion. The crucifixion of the man Jesus had to be at 
a certain time and place ; but a spectacular judgment 
in some special place at the end of the world is not 
needful, and would do no good. It could not make 
the saved any happier, the lost any more miserable, 
or God and Christ any more glorious. No witnesses 
need be heard, because the Judge knows all things, 
even the secrets of all souls. No proximity is neces- 
sary, because the Judge can as easilj- and quickly 
communicate his decision to a person ten millions of 
miles distant as to one only ten feet away. In the 
Divine economy, what is not becoming, needful, or 
beneficial will not be. Thus, in the light of reason, 
the imagery of a general judgment dissolves and 
vanishes ; and the judicial dispensation of Christ ex- 
pands to all time, all lands, and all human beings. 

2. The theory that the judgment is a future, far- 
off, simultaneous affair may be in accordance with, 
and essential to, the belief that the main awards for 
human conduct are in the immortal world ; and it 
may also seem merciful to give the sinner a whole 
lifetime in any hour of which he may repent, believe, 
beg for mercy, be forgiven, anfl thus escape deserved 
retribution ; but what is apparently gained in consist- 
ency and mercy is more than counterbalanced by a 
loss of moral power. If the sinner is convinced that 



154 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

at any time, in old age or in his dying hour, he may 
by proper effort secure full pardon from God, and go 
to judgment with a clean breast, and thus escape 
being rewarded according to his works, the inevitable 
tendency of his conviction will be procrastination and 
continuance in wrong-doing. Many an eloquent ser- 
mon on the " danger and folly of procrastination ,: 
has been preached ; but the many still prefer to run 
the risk a little longer, — to continue in sin until 
death stares them in the face. But the theory of a 
continuous, universal court of justice in which every 
person every day is judged and rewarded according 
to his deeds, has an immense moral influence. Con- 
vince a man that all sin results in misery, and that 
each sin he commits increases the amount of his mis- 
eiy ; that all virtue results in happiness, and that 
each virtuous act he does increases the amount of his 
happiness ; that the great Judge of all is constantly 
weighing his conduct and working out these results, 
and that there is no possibilitj' of losing the happi- 
ness or escaping the misery ; and unless he is totally 
depraved or wholly a fool, he will tiy with all his 
energy to u cease to do evil and learn to do good." 
We are aware that the fear of punishment and the 
hope of blessings are not the o\\\y or the strongest 
incentives to virtue (l<5Ve is far stronger) ; but when 
they are absolutely certain and immediate, as under 
the government of God in Christ they must be, they 
exert a healthy moralizing power. 



THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 155 

3. The main reason for believing that the general 
judgment is now going on, and that every person on 
earth is now being judged, is that this doctrine is 
clearly taught in the Bible. We see and know that 
by natural laws some awards are made, both for 
doing right and for doing wrong ; that, other things 
being equal, the temperate are more healthy than the 
intemperate, the good man happier and more hopeful 
than the bad man ; but outside of Revelation there 
is no assurance that every person is or is to be re- 
warded fully, according to his works. In fact, appar- 
ently the virtuous suffer, and the vicious are happy. 
It is therefore a relief to search the Scriptures, and 
find therein " more light." 

Ps. lviii. 11 : "Verily He is a God that judgeth 
in the earth." This cannot mean that He sometimes 
judges some people, and at other times abstains from 
judging. Instead, it is an announcement of the im- 
portant fact that the omnipresent Gocl is at all times 
judging all the people on the earth. It is a general, 
universal, continuous judgment. Moreover, it is ab- 
solutely just and right, and is going on every mo- 
ment from birth to death. No case is " put over" 
to a future session ; and an appeal from God's judg- 
ment is not supposable. There is no need of an- 
other judgment at the end of the world ; and what 
is not needed, will not be. Essentially practical, all 
Christians concur in this opinion. At the moment 
of death every man's case and account is settled 



156 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

beyond any possibility of any change in the Divine 
verdict. To the wicked who hope to escape retri- 
bution, the certainty of immediate justice may be 
alarming; but in reality, all that God does is good 
and for the best good of all. Hence it is written 
(Ps. xix. 9, 10) : " The judgments of the Lord are 
true and righteous altogether. More to be desired 
are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold ; sweeter 
also than hone}' and the honeycomb." In other 
words, the best thing in the world and for the 
world is the superintendence and management of 
the all-wise and all-good Judge. One feature of 
the blessed results of Christ's judgeship is foretold 
by the prophet Micah (iv. 3, 4) : "And He shall 
judge among man}' people, and rebuke strong na- 
tions afar off; and the}' shall beat their swords into 
ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks ; 
nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, 
neither shall they learn war any more. But they 
shall sit every man under his own vine and fig 
tree ; and none shall make them afraid." In other 
words, the result of the judging or administra- 
tion of Christ will be the redemption of the human 
race on earth from strife and sin and the misery 
that attends them. In ancient Oriental monarchies 
the king was the supreme judge ; and if he was 
kind and competent, his nation enjoyed prosperity 
and happiness. Christ, the king and judge of all 
the earth, is kind and competent, and under his reign 



THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 157 

the Prophets foretold a time when the Holy Spirit 
would be poured on all flesh, and all, from the great- 
est to the least, would know the Lord. 

In the Old Testament, God is spoken of as the 
judge of all ; in the New Testament, Christ is the 
sole judge. The law and the policy are the same 
in both dispensations ; but in the new regime the 
Son is the official agent of the Father. Jesus said 
(John v. 22): "The Father judgeth no man, but 
hath committed all judgment unto the Son." He 
adds (John v. 27) that the Father " hath given him 
authority to execute judgment." Again (John ix. 
39): "Jesus said, For judgment I am come into 
this world." And finall\ T he said (John xii. 31), 
" Now is the judgment of this world." Putting all 
this together, and bearing in mind that the risen 
Lord said, u All power in heaven and earth is given 
unto me," the conclusions seem to us irresistible, 
that there is a Divine judgment now going on in 
this world among living men ; that Christ is the 
judge ; that it began immediately after his resurrec- 
tion ; that every person of each successive genera- 
tion must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, 
to receive in body the things he hath done ; and that 
another judgment of the same people for the same 
offences or virtues, at the end of time, is utterly 
needless and improbable. 

Several years ago, Professor Alpheus Crosby of 
Dartmouth College published a small volume en- 



158 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

titled " The Second Advent," in which he clearly 
shows, by a multitude of proof- texts, (1) that the 
second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, 
the general judgment, and the end of the world 
(ciion) are simultaneous events ; and (2) that the 
second coming of Christ must have taken place 
before some of the Twelve had tasted death, and 
hence before the generation in which he lived -had 
passed away. All the writers of the New Testament 
expected his immediate return to earth ; and their 
expectations were realized, not perhaps in the man- 
ner of his coming, but in its date. In saying to the 
Revelator, "Behold, I come quickly/' the Saviour 
uttered the exact truth. He did come the second 
time, immediately ; and of course the three other 
contemporaneous events — the resurrection, the judg- 
ment, and the end of the world — transpired. But 
there is no historical record of these events in a 
material form. The old earth still rolls peacefully 
in its orbit, the bones of the patriarchs quietly re- 
pose in the cave of Machpelah, and no outward eye 
has ever seen Jesus coming in the clouds, or the 
great white throne of judgment. And for the best 
of reasons, no such physical changes ever occurred 
or ever will occur ; no such outward events were 
predicted or were to be expected. They were all 
spiritual affairs. Christ did come again as a spirit ; 
the dead in sin, the human race, was summoned to 
his spiritual tribunal. The Jewish world, age, dispen- 



THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 159 

sation, ended; and the Christian age began. In no 
other way can the passages that speak of these events 
be interpreted as true. We must abandon the Bible, 
or abandon the old notion of a literal resurrection 
and judgment at some vet future date. We prefer 
to give up the notion and hold on to the Bible. 

Being thus obliged to adopt a spiritual exegesis 
of the general judgment, let us examine with care 
some of the Scripture statements on the subject, 
and try to ascertain whether they do or do not war- 
rant our theory. A study of the twenty-fourth and 
twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew w T ill satisfy an} T log- 
ical mind that there is good reason to believe that 
the\' both refer, and only refer, to events synchronous 
with the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the 
Jewish dispensation, and the beginning of the Chris- 
tian. If such an interpretation can be fairly made, 
we shall be glad to accept it and retain our faith in 
the Word of God. We can still believe that Jesus 
spoke the simple truth ; that the great judgment de- 
scribed in Matt. xxv. 31-46, began eighteen hundred 
years ago, that it has not ended, and that it will not 
end until the reign of Christ shall terminate. 

There may be no warrant for asserting that the 
judgment is restricted to persons in this earthly life. 
It is certain that Christ is the judge of all, both the 
living and the dead, whether in the body or out of 
the body. It is also certain that a large majority of 
mankind have died in their sins ; and perhaps the 



160 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

general judgment extends to them, and causes each 
one of their guilt}' souls to go to its own place and 
receive a just recompense of reward. The possi- 
bility of this we are not disposed to deny ; but it is 
a noteworthy fact that in the two great passages of 
Scripture in which the future life is spoken of with 
most distinctness, no allusion is made to a judgment. 
In reply to a question of the Sadducees respecting 
the marital relationships of the future life, Jesus 
said (Luke xx. 35, 36): " They which shall be 
accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the 
resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are 
given in marriage : neither can they die any more : 
for they are equal unto the angels ; and are the 
children of God, being the children of the resurrec- 
tion." This is a clear and precious statement of the 
immortal realm, but it has no hint of an}' judgment 
there. It may teach a conditional resurrection, but 
it completely excludes the idea of an after-resurrec- 
tion judgment. Those who are the immortal sons of 
God, and equal to the angels, certainly do not need 
to be judged. If there is to be a general judgment 
of those raised from the dead, it is strange Jesus did 
not mention it to the infidel Sadducees. Equally 
silent is Saint Paul in his lucid and explicit expo- 
sition of the resurrection in 1 Cor. xv. He dis- 
tinctly states that all are to be raised, each in his 
own order, in incorruption, power, gloiy, in a spiritual 
body, and are to be unlike each other as stars differ 



THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 161 

in brilliancy ; but he does not even remotely allude 
to an} T judgment in that exalted life. It may be that 
64 he that is dead is freed from sin," and that the 
close of the earthly life is to each soul the end of 
judgment. 

It is quite probable that so far as soul development 
is concerned, the consequences of the present life ex- 
tend far into the future in peculiarity of condition, 
rank, order, and amount or intensity of love and joy. 
Yet the judicial awards for special deeds of vice or 
virtue may be made and received before or in death. 
Adopting the Revised Version, and omitting the 
italic word done, this doctrine seems to be clearly 
taught by Saint Paul in 2 Cor. v. 10 : " We must all 
be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, 
that each one may receive the things in [or through] 
the body, according to what he hath done, whether 
good or bad." The " things " must be the awards for 
good or bad deeds ; and if they are received in or 
through the bod}', only one question remains : Was 
Saint Paul right or wrong? If he was right, there is 
to be no after-death judgment, rewards, or punish- 
ments ; if he is wrong, not reliable, we are all afloat 
without helm or anchor. We dare not reject the 
teaching of the great Apostle to the Gentiles. We 
believe in him, and rejoice that he repeats in sub- 
stance the testimony of Solomon (Prov. xi. 31) : 
u The righteous sliall be recompensed in the earth: 
much more the wicked and the sinner." 

11 



162 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



XVI. 

THE SECOND DEATH. 

" He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." — 
Rev. ii. 11. 

T^ROM this we may infer that some will not over- 
come, and will therefore be hurt by that mys- 
terious change, the second death. Hurt how, when, 
where ? There are onty four verses in the Bible that 
allude to the " second death" by name ; and these 
are all in Saint John's book of the Revelation. This 
occult book few people pretend fully to understand. 
To us it is a sacred panorama ; the pictures are dis- 
tinct, but we cannot always perceive their meaning. 
Hence we approach the subject with diffidence. 

There are four theories respecting the second 
death : — 

1. It is not a death at all, but eternal life in cease- 
less miseiy. A second implies a first. The first 
death is the end of the present life, but the second 
death is not the end of anything. Instead, it is 
the beginning of endless woe, in which the poor 
lost soul, in full possession of all its faculties, will 
live and suffer forever. This theory is in accord 



THE SECOND DEATH, 163 

with the belief of many Christians ; but it is so at 
variance with the ordinary meaning of words and 
the use of language, and so manifestly absurd, as to 
be unworthy of consideration. We leave it without 
comment. 

2. The second death is the death of the soul. The 
first death is the dissolution and extinction of the 
material body ; the second death is the dissolution 
and annihilation of the spirit. If an immortal spirit 
can thus die, this theory is plausible. It is ana- 
logically sound ; other passages of Scripture seem 
to give it support ; and some evangelical Christians 
are said to believe it. But the doctrine of annihila- 
tion is not in harmony with philosophy, or the spirit 
of the Gospel. It has never had man}' advocates in 
the Church of Christ, and probably never will have. 
To be u hurt'" does not mean to be " killed ; " and to 
be " hurt of the second death" cannot mean to be 
" put out of existence." We abandon this theoiy. 

3. The second death is apostasy. To sin is to 
die. " In the da}* thou eatest of the forbidden fruit, 
thou shalt die." The unregenerate sinner is dead. 
This is the first death. To be converted, to believe 
in the teaching of Christ, to turn " from darkness to 
light and from the power of Satan unto God," is the 
first resurrection ; and to return to sin and unbelief 
is to die again, — is the second death. We find no 
fault in this theoiy. It is ingenious ; it is well 
poised ; it is advocated by some able theologians ; 



164 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

but it is not clearly taught in the Bible, and we are 
therefore obliged to rule it out as unsound. 

4. Both the first death and the second were na- 
tional affairs. The Jewish people, proud of their 
ancestry, of the purity of their blood, and of their 
religion, had dwelt in Palestine for many centuries. 
They believed themselves to be a chosen and highly 
favored race ; the} 7 loved their hill-country home ; 
and they fondly hoped to remain there forever. But, 
b. c. 588, Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, 
with a mighty arnry, invaded and subjugated Pales- 
tine, captured Jerusalem, burned the sacred temple, 
and carried almost the entire people into captivity in 
a foreign land. The fields of Judaea were left uncul- 
tivated, the houses empty, the land desolate. The 
nation was dead as a nation could be ; and Palestine 
was erased from the map of kingdoms. The calamity 
was worse than the dismemberment of Poland ; it 
was the apparent end of the Hebrew nationality, 
language, religion, and name. It was a national 
death, the first death of the Jewish commonwealth. 
The nation was dead, but the people still lived ; and 
after an exile of fifty-two }~ears, by a decree of Cyrus, 
King of the Medo-Persian Empire, a small portion of 
the people returned to their fatherland, and began 
to reconstruct the fallen State. Slowly and with 
much difficulty the walls of the capital were re- 
paired, the temple rebuilt, the land cultivated, and 
a new lease of political life obtained. In the course 



THE SECOND DEATH. 165 

of time the full tide of prosperity came in, the 
promised Messiah was born, and a long and lofty 
career seemed open to the Jews. This was the first 
resurrection. 

In Saint John's da} T another, a greater, and a 
lasting calamity was about to befall the Jewish na- 
tion ; and it soon after came. A Roman army in 
command of Titus Vespasian, after a long and dis- 
tressing siege, captured and destroyed Jerusalem. 
The temple was burned, many thousands of the 
people perished, many thousands were exiled ; and 
the national life became extinct. This was the 
second and apparently the final death of the Jewish 
nation. During all the eighteen centuries since the 
terrible event there has been no semblance of a 
Jewish government in Palestine or anywhere else ; 
and in all these dreary ages the homeless and 
scattered Hebrews have everywhere been a despised 
and ill-treated people. This impending calamity, 
clearly foreseen and foretold b}' our Saviour, is fre- 
quently alluded to in the New Testament ; and Saint 
John voiced the general feeling in giving it the 
appropriate name, the " second death." In our 
judgment, this theory is very plausible. It is self- 
consistent and analogical ; it is in harmony with 
historical facts ; and it can be applied to each of the 
four passages in which the phrase " second death" 
occurs. 

1. " He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the 



166 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

second death" (Rev. iL 11). Three facts are here 
stated : (1) There was to be a second death ; (2) It 
would hurt some people ; (3) Others — they that 
overcame something — it would not hurt. The re- 
mark was made to the church in Smyrna, which at 
that time contained a large number of Christianized 
Jews. The unconverted followers of Moses and the 
Prophets were bitterly opposed to the religion of 
Jesus, and plied every art and used every means in 
their power to crush it out. The disciples of Christ 
were reasoned with, tempted, warned, persecuted. 
They were soldiers of the cross, and their daily life 
was a constant warfare. Some overcame all opposi- 
tion, and held fast their faith and integrit}^ ; others 
yielded to the pressure, relapsed into Judaism, and 
shared the sad fate of the Jewish nation, — that is, 
were hurt of the second death. The faithful Chris- 
tian, true to himself, his Master, and his God, though 
liable to persecution, was on the winning side, be- 
came cosmopolitan, felt sure of eternal life, and was 
not hurt by the great Jewish calamity, — the second 
national death. This interpretation seems natural, 
plain, reasonable, consistent, true. 

2. "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the 
first resurrection ; on such the second death hath no 
power" (Rev. xx. 6). The first resurrection, as has 
already been shown, was the return of the Jews 
from exile in Babylon, the re-establishment of the 
nation and the temple service, growth in virtue, 



THE SECOND DEATH. 167 

and the advent of Christ, whom great multitudes 
of the " common people heard gladljv" Jesus said, 
"I am the resurrection;" and of course he was 
the first resurrection. Into him, into his spirit, out 
of idolatiy and ignorance, a goodly portion of the 
chosen people had been rising ever since the decree 
of Cyrus. Those who are in Christ, in the spirit 
of Christ, have part in the first resurrection. They 
are blessed and holy ; and on such, in Saint John's 
day and ever since, the second death — the disper- 
sion, degradation, and misery of the Jews — hath no 
power. They escape because they do not bear the 
Jewish name, and their Father careth for them. 

3. u And death and Hades were cast into the lake 
of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of 
fire" (Rev. xx. 14, Revised Version). This pas- 
sage is more difficult than the two already explained, 
simply because it is a broader statement, clothed in 
more figurative language. It is an Oriental court 
scene ; and the meaning is to be sought beneath the 
imagery. That meaning cannot be found with the 
precision and certainty of a mathematical solution ; 
but to our mind, it is approximately the following: 
" And I saw a great white throne," — the symbol of 
royal and judicial authority, — "and Him that sat 
upon it," — Christ, the divine king and judge, — "be- 
fore whose face the earth and the heaven " — temporal 
and ecclesiastical governments — "fled away; and 
there was found no place for them," — they became 



168 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

of no consequence. "And I saw the dead, small 
and great," — all nations and peoples dead in sin, — 
" stand before God " to be judged. There was no res- 
urrection ; all were still dead. " And the books " — 
the records of conduct, and the volume of Mosaic and 
universal law — " were opened," — adopted as the ba- 
sis of the judgment ; " and another book was opened, 
which is the book of life," — the Gospel of Christ. 
" And the dead " — not those raised to immortal life 
— " were judged out of those things which were writ- 
ten in the books." Those who had no knowledge 
of the law recorded on parchment had the divine 
commands, the law written on their hearts, and 
therefore were amenable to the Judge of all. " And 
the sea gave up the dead which were in it ; and death 
and Hades delivered up the dead which were in 
them," — figures to indicate the universality of the 
judgment; "and they were judged every man ac- 
cording to his works," — some having been more 
sinful than others. "And death and Hades were 
cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, 
even the lake of fire. And whosoever was not found 
written in the book of life was cast into the lake 
of fire," to be punished. Here we have a definition, 
a synonyme ; the second death is the lake of fire. 
But where or what was the lake of fire ? It was not 
hell, for hell was cast into it ; yet it seems to have 
been a place. What place? When Moscow was 
burning, in the days of the First Napoleon, a spec- 



THE SECOND DEATH. 169 

tator said it resembled " a sea of fire ; " and when 
Sodom was burning, it probably resembled a lake of 
fire, — a spectacle that no Jew ever forgot. So when 
Jerusalem was burning, at the close of the siege 
conducted by Titus, it appeared like a lake of fire. 
To this event, as it appeared in vision, Saint John 
alluded ; but, like everything else in his strange book, 
the allusion is figurative. A great fire is a great ca- 
lamity, involving suffering, death, destruction. Those 
whose names were not written in the book of life 
were to suffer keenly ; death, and Hades the place 
of the dead, were to be destroyed. But it was not 
literal fire ; it was the executive arm of God — who, 
it is said, ;c is a consuming fire " — stretched forth in 
retributive justice and mercy in the Christian dis- 
pensation, — justice in punishing the guilty, mercy 
in destroying evil. This truth is stated more fully 
in the fourth passage. 

4. " But the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the 
abominable, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idol- 
aters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake 
that burnetii with fire and brimstone, which is the 
second death" (Rev. xxi. 8). Here we have the 
same lake of fire and the same second death men- 
tioned in the third passage, but with two added 
particulars. First, the fire is fed or mingled with 
brimstone, which increases its horribleness. The 
stench of burning sulphur is very offensive and suf- 
focating. The combined action of these two, as 



170 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

agents of destruction, is a very ancient idea. In 
Gen. xix. 24, it is recorded, "Then the Lord rained 
upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire ; " 
and they were thus utterly destroyed. This was 
known to all the Jews; and "fire and brimstone" 
became a phrase that denoted overwhelming ruin, 
and it appears to be thus used by Saint John. The 
second added particular is the specification of guilt, 
— the fearful or cowardly, the abominable, sorcerers, 
murderers, etc. Not only Jews, but Gentiles also ; 
not onlv those who disobey the laws of Moses, but 
all sinners — all kinds of sinners — are to have their 
part in the lake of fire which is the second death. 
The retribution under the judgeship of Christ, in the 
siege, capture, and conflagration of Jerusalem, contin- 
ues, and extends to all mankind. It is the steady, 
ubiquitous working of Divine law, to which we and 
all are amenable. It is one of the solemn truths of 
the Christian religion, and it should be emphatically 
stated time and again in every pulpit : " All sinners 
shall have their part in the lake of fire." 

At this point our attempt to explain the mystery 
of the second death might close, did not several 
corollaries come to mind, that throw light on this 
confessedly difficult subject. 

1. God is the Creator of all things, and hence 
He must have scooped out the basin of the lake, pre- 
pared the fuel, and kindled the fire. We cannot 
imagine that He, the great and good Ruler of the 



TEE SECOND DEATH. 171 

universe, would allow any other person to get up 
such a vast bale-fire. The lake of fire, with all its 
appurtenances, is therefore His institution ; and being 
His, it must be a good, an excellent, lake of fire 
and brimstone. A better one could not have been 
made. If we never see it, if we fail to appreciate its 
good qualities, we are not at liberty to doubt its 
worth and worthiness. God doeth all things well. 

2. We are unable to perceive any beaut}^, an}~- 
thing ornamental, in this fiery lake, and hence we 
conclude that He made it, as we build a house or 
prison, for a useful purpose ; and, He being ail-wise 
and kind, this useful purpose must be good and com- 
mendable. Dr. J. Edwards's idea that the saints in 
heaven will rejoice at the agony of lost sinners never 
impressed us pleasantly ; but there is no doubt that 
if we could fully comprehend the good purpose of the 
lake of fire, we should be glad that it was made, and 
grateful that it is or is to be used. 

8. As there is no historj- or prophec}' of the fire 
being extinguished, in all probability it is still burn- 
ing, and so long as needed its lurid flame will continue 
to rise. 

4. The lake of fire was evidently made to put sin- 
ners in to be tormented, to cause them to surfer ex- 
cruciating agony. This seems cruel ; and if the only 
object is to cause intense pain, it is cruel, and utterly 
unworthy the God who is love. He who calls souls 
into existence is certainly able to destroy them ; and 



172 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

annihilation is far better than endless suffering that 
does no good. 

5. But there may be — let us hope there is — an- 
other object. Fire purifies, consumes, melts away 
the dross, and sets free the pure gold. Possibly the 
lake of fire is to burn off and burn out sin ; to make 
the sinner thoughtful and penitent ; to turn his heart 
to the Saviour ; to refine, purify, and save the guilty. 
If this is so, the object is truly noble ; and we are 
glad the fire was kindled, and devoutly pray that all 
sinners may have their part in it and receive its 
benefit. 

6. But literal fire cannot even scorch the real sin- 
ner, the soul. Material bodies can hardly be called 
sinners, yet they onfy can be burned. Other — finer 
— agencies reach the spirit. u Fear hath torment ; " 
and so have shame, regret, and remorse ; and these 
agencies have a tendenc}' to humble, make penitent, 
reform, and refine the doer of evil. The literal fire, 
being utterly powerless and useless, itktv as well go 
out. Few w r ell-informed Christians in this age believe 
in a literal lake of fire and brimstone. 

7. The second death — that is, the lake of fire — 
is the mental misery into which the wicked are 
plunged. It is the sequence of iniquity ; and it exists 
wherever and whenever a person transgresses the 
laws of God. It is certainly in this world ; and it 
will certainly be, or it is, in the resurrection state, if 
anv sin is there committed. 



THE SECOND DEATH. 173 

8. Whj T sin and its inevitable punishment were 
permitted, the wisest men have not yet fully decided. 
God's ways are inscrutable, but the}' are right and 
good. Jesus, though not sinful, was made perfect 
through suffering ; and it may be that all suffering 
is a means of grace, and that t; our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 



174 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



XVII. 

SPIRITS IN PRISON. 

Christ " went and preached unto the spirits in prison" — 1 Pet. 
iii. 19. 

" The gospel was also preached to them that are dead" — 1 Pet. 
iv. 6. 

npO our mind, these sayings have ever seemed dark 
and hard to. be understood ; and we have long 
wished for light on this subject. The explanations 
given by the learned commentators have not been 
entirely satisfactory ; and we were unable to frame a 
theory that would full}' accord with reason and reve- 
lation. It was therefore with great pleasure that we 
recently found and read, in a high-toned magazine, 
an article on iC Preaching to the Spirits in Prison." 
It was written Iry a ripe scholar and profound thinker, 
and was a labored attempt to show that the passages 
quoted above are historical statements of actual oc- 
currences. There was, and perhaps is, a prison in 
which spirits were imprisoned. The dead, at least 
some of the dead, were also there. They needed to 
hear preaching, and Christ "went and preached to 
them." This was the interpretation ; and so far as 
our limited knowledge of the dead languages enabled 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 175 

us to judge, the arguments were philologically cor- 
rect. This explanation also revealed a new lustre in 
the Saviour's glory : he came not only to seek and 
save the lost on earth, but also the spirits in prison. 
We may now pray and hope for the salvation of the 
dead, even for those who never heard of Christ or his 
gospel ; for some of those in prison who listened to 
his preaching are undoubtedly saved. But on mature 
reflection, many puzzling questions arise. 

Where was the prison to which the Saviour went? 
When, by whom, and of what material was it built? 
Was it hell ? Some learned divines tell us that hell 
is a condition, and not a place ; but a prison is a 
place, a bounded localit}-. The word has no other 
meaning. Hence, either there is a local hell, or the 
adjunct "in prison" is redundant. If there is no 
prison, why did Saint Peter speak of one? We find 
it hard to believe in a local spirit prison ; we dislike 
to think the Apostle indulged in empty verbiage ; 
and we are almost compelled to suppose his language 
figurative. 

Again, who were the prisoners? If it be said, 
"They were the spirits of all the sinners who had 
died previous to that time," the congregation was 
the largest that ever listened to a single speaker. 
There must have been at least 50,000,000,000 spir- 
its present on the great occasion. How much space 
did they occupy? Perhaps a spirit is infinitesimally 
small ; if so, they inay all have been near the speaker. 



176 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

In this case an ordinary voice might have been loud 
enough for them all to hear. If the sinners then de- 
served a sermon or two, the wicked who have since 
died and gone to prison must also deserve to hear 
preaching. Why was not the place made a mission- 
ary station, and the efforts to save sinners continued? 
So far as we know, this was the only religious service 
ever held in that prison. The chaplain was perfect, 
but the time seems inadequate. 

Again, preaching consists in talking to people, in 
delivering a religious discourse. Did Christ really 
talk to the prisoners, and in a language the}' all could 
understand? If so, either all had learned a common 
language after their incarceration, or the preacher 
spoke to them in a thousand different tongues at once 
or consecutively, or they were miraculously enabled 
to understand any language. Each supposition in- 
volves a miracle ; and the Being that could empower 
these spirits to understand words new to them could 
as easily have empowered them to comprehend the 
ideas uttered without any words, and the preaching 
have been omitted. Inspiration and intuition are the 
divine methods of instructing souls ; and possibly the 
preaching was not verbal and literal, but was spiritual 
communion without the use of tongue or ears. 

It is supposed by those who adopt the literal 
theory, that the preaching to the spirits in prison 
took place during the interval between the death and 
resurrection of Christ. He died about three o'clock, 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 177 

Friday afternoon. The women who went to the 
tomb Sunday morning, "very earl}', while it was 
yet dark," discovered that the sepulchre was empty. 
The hour of his rising is not stated ; it may have 
been soon after midnight ; and if so, he remained in 
the realm of the dead not longer than thirty-six 
hours. Was not that rather a short time to devote 
to preaching to several thousand millions of sinful 
spirits? With so many, and so vast interests at 
stake, it seems to us that a thousand years of 
preaching would have been none too much. 

What did Christ preach to the spirits in prison ? 
Old truth? If they did not know there is a God, 
and that they had violated His laws, and therefore 
deserved punishment, their imprisonment was cruel. 
They were in the condition of many a victim of the 
Spanish Inquisition, who found himself in a dungeon 
without being aware that he had done wrong. We 
dislike to think that Torquemada imitated God. But 
if the prisoners did know the law of God, and their 
guilt, then there was no need of preaching to them 
these old truths. Was it new truth, — the Gospel 
truth, that God had sent His Son to seek and save 
the lost, and that he was then doing this sublime 
work? If his mission extended to imprisoned spirits, 
this would have been worthy the Preacher and the 
occasion. But did they not know all about it? Had 
no new-comer, no " foul spirit" cast out by Jesus, 
told the news from earth? Had no John Howard 

12 



178 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

angel carried the glad tidings to the prison? It 
is written, " The devils believe and tremble;" were 
they better informed than their fellow-prisoners? 
The simple truth is this : we do nojb know, and we 
cannot imagine, the status of spirits in prison ; and 
the preaching needed by them is to us unthinkable. 
But the preaching of Christ anywhere to any lis- 
teners must do good ; and some of the hearers must 
have been converted and freed, — how many, we are 
not informed. Nor have we an}' promise that the 
Saviour will ever again visit this penitentiary. Unless 
all were redeemed in that thirty-six hours' ministry, 
there is nothing in Revelation to give any hope for 
the salvation of all the prisoners. The curtain falls 
on the dreary scene, and we wonder why it was 
raised. The strange statements of Saint Peter, un- 
supported by any other Scripture testimony, do not 
seem a sufficient basis on which to build a theory of 
the spirit realm ; and we are compelled to believe 
they are not bits of history, but are to be interpreted 
figuratively. 

The statement is explicit that there was a prison 
in which spirits were prisoners ; if that place was 
not in the spirit world, where and what was it? 
Our answer is, the prison is the human, material 
body. In that, during this life, the immortal spirit 
is confined. Saint Paul calls it a tabernacle. The 
poets speak of it as a tenement, — "a close, im- 
mured wall." In dying the body " gives up the 



SPIFITS IN PRISON. 179 

ghost " — pneuma, the spirit — which it had held. 
This or similar phraseolog}^ is so common in the 
Bible, and so in accord with poetical and Christian 
usas;e, that no further comment is necessary. The 
prison is the material bod}', and the prisoners were 
the spirits of men and women living in this mate- 
rial world. To these Christ in spirit "went and 
preached, in times past, while the ark was being 
built." In making this statement, the Apostle gave 
expression to a very important Christian doctrine, 
too often overlooked, — the universality of Christ's 
mission and work. It is not of recent elate. It did 
not begin when Jesus preached the Sermon on the 
Mount, nor when the Babe was born in Bethlehem. 
The Word that was made flesh and dwelt in Pales- 
tine eighteen centuries ago, had long before thrilled 
the minds of prophets and patriarchs. The true 
Light, that lighteth every man who cometh into the 
world, had flashed its rajs along the path of Israel 
in the Wilderness. Christ existed before he was 
sent to save mankind. The Christ spirit preached 
to spirits in prison before the Deluge, and was coeval 
with Adam. He said, " Before Abraham was, I 
am." He was, he is, he will be, "the same, yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever." 

His mission was not to a few, — not to the chosen 
people, the elect, the called, but to all the human 
race. The narrowest kind of limitarianism is the 
belief that Christ works for human good only in 



180 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

certain localities and through certain agencies. He 
" is the Saviour of all men, especially those that 
believe." He was in India before the arrival of the 
missionaries. As Brahma is said to be able to ap- 
pear in human form in thousands of homes at the 
same moment, so Christ can be present, as a saving 
influence, in all the homes and hearts of earth at 
the same moment. He is not select in his choice of 
souls. He came to save all, if possible. He ate 
with publicans and sinners. He said, u Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest." He preached the Gospel, in the 
" still, small voice/' to the dead in sin and sensual- 
ity, and even to spirits in prison. Bear in mind 
that while the body confines the spirit, it is a prison 
to the ignorant and sinful only. The good spirit 
that understands and believes the Gospel, is not a 
prisoner ; he enjoys the glorious liberty of the sons 
of God. In every land and age, Christ as a spiritual 
influence has been preaching to all souls ; teaching 
them to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, and to 
live soberly, righteously, and godly. 

Such is our interpretation of these difficult pas- 
sages ; and it harmonizes with the general scope of 
the Bible. It is free from ambiguity and absurdity, 
and is worth}' the pen of him who was taught to 
call nothing " common or unclean." It is as if the 
Apostle had said, " Our Saviour, the Lord Jesus 
Christ, is not a mere man of our times, not a 



SPIRITS IN PRISON. 181 

gifted and great man, but the divine Son of God, by 
whom the world was created, with whom man has 
always been in contact, — even the lowest and worst ; 
and through him alone the world is to be saved." 
This is the Gospel ; this is orthodox, and to us 
satisfactory ; and to it we shall cling until some- 
thing better is presented. 



182 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



XVIII. 

EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 

" These shall go away into everlasting punishment." — Matt. 
xxv. 46. 

TTERE, at last, we find limitarianism announced in 
the plainest language. Christ has come again, 
in his glory, with his angels, has summoned into his 
august presence all nations, and has divided them 
into two classes, the righteous and the wicked. A 
brief trial takes place, a hearing is granted to all, 
and then the verdict is given : " the wicked shall go 
away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous 
into life eternal" — these to inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for them " from the foundation of the world ; " 
those to go " into everlasting fire, prepared for the 
devil and his angels." It is impossible to state the 
case in any stronger or clearer language. The Eng- 
lish words eternal, everlasting, forever, for ever 
ancl ever, mean endless duration, and nothing else. 
The eternal life and the everlasting punishment are 
of equal length ; and both the punishment and the 
fire are everlasting. Is there any way through this 
awful shadow? To those who believe and want 
to believe in the unending misery of the wicked, 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 183 

this passage of Scripture affords aid and comfort, — 
it settles the question ; but for those who desire 
to know the exact meaning of the words, be it for 
or against them, and who try to compare Scrip- 
ture with Scripture, light breaks in from several 
directions. 

1. It is not certain that the phrase " eternal life," as 
used in the New Testament, ever indicates duration. 
Instead, it is certain that it generally means a par- 
ticular kind or condition of life, — a pure, living, 
heavenly life ; life in Christ ; life in the kingdom of 
heaven. A few quotations will make this manifest. 
When the wealthy young man came to Jesus and 
said (Matt. xix. 16), "What good thing shall I 
do, that I may have eternal life?" he did not mean, 
" that I may live forever." People in those daj^s 
did not believe in conditional immortality. He did 
not inquire how he might be raised to life after 
death. He saw that Jesus was animated by a life or 
spirit which made him great, good, divine ; and the 
young man desired to share that potent and noble 
life. It was the current report that Jesus claimed to 
be the promised Messiah, and that he was about to 
establish on earth the glorious Messianic kingdom. 
The inquirer desired a place in it. That kingdom, 
the new national life, was to be enduring, eternal ; 
and so long as he lived, he wished to share its glory 
and joy. " What good thing shall I do to attain 
that? " At that time even the Twelve did not real- 



184 THROUGH THE SHADOWS, 

ize that Christ's kingdom was to be purely spirit- 
ual; and the young man manifested an ignorance 
equal to theirs. In reply to his question, Jesus told 
him how to become " perfect." Perfection and eter- 
nal life are one and the same ; and neither of the 
terms means unending existence in heaven. The 
Beloved Disciple said (1 John v. 11, 12) : " God hath 
given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 
He that hath the Son hath life ; and he that hath not 
the Son of God hath not life." Here eternal life 
does not mean immortality, or entrance into heaven, 
or an j' thing future. It was something Saint John 
and his friends already had. It was the spirit, the 
animus, of Christ. To make this idea entirety- clear 
and free from doubt, Jesus said (John xvii. 3) : 
M This is eternal life, that they- might know Thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
sent." It is not a period of time or a local habita- 
tion, but an intelligent condition, a belief and faith 
in God and Christ. 

In the passage under consideration, eternal life and 
eternal punishment are exact opposites. This is self- 
evident. If the one means endless happiness, the 
other means endless misery ; if one refers to the im- 
mortal realm, so does the other. But, as has been 
shown, eternal life means onty' a kind of life, — a 
pure, perfect, divine life ; hence everlasting punish- 
ment must mean the opposite, — an impure, imper- 
fect, ungodly life. The one, of course, is joyful ; the 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 185 

other, joyless ; but in neither is there any allusion to 
duration, long or short. We dare not say the passage 
means more than it expresses ; and we are therefore 
obliged to confess that it fails to prove the endless 
punishment of the wicked. 

2. As before stated, the English words eternal, 
everlasting, and forever signify endless duration ; 
but it is not certain that either the Hebrew olam or 
its Greek equivalent aionios has often, if ever, this 
meaning in the Bible. In many a petty lawsuit, in- 
volving the rights of property alone, the exact mean- 
ing of every word in the contract is sought with the 
utmost care ; in the case involving the destiny of 
immortal souls, the meaning of words cannot be too 
carefully weighed. A thorough review of all that 
has been wiitten on the meaning of aionios would 
fill a large volume ; in this brief chapter onl^y a few 
items can be stated. Those who would see the sub- 
ject fully ventilated can consult Dr. J. W". Hanson's 
" Aion — Aionios." Jesus said, and Matthew wrote, 
"These shall go away into aionian punishment." 
But aionios does not alwavs mean " endless ; " and 
in the Bible it rarely has this signification, as the 
following considerations clearly indicate. 

In any and every large Greek lexicon, the radical 
meaning of aion is said to be " age ; " and the deriva- 
tive meanings are " time, a lifetime, a long period of 
time, time indefinite." That this is the true defini- 
tion may be inferred from the facts that aion has a 



186 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

plural, as eternity has not : and that axons of axons, 
axons and beyond, the ends of the axons, and this 
axon and the axon to come, are spoken of in the 
Bible. No such usage of the word eternity is admis- 
sible. Hence aion does not mean " eternhyy." Aion- 
ios is an adjective derived from axon, and it must 
mean " pertaining to an aion'' It does not therefore 
signify ''eternal'" or "everlasting." Jesus did not 
say, "These shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment," although the translators put that word in his 
mouth. Let us not be wise above what was written 
in Greek. A few quotations of Scripture will show 
the correctness of the above statements : — 

Dan. ii. 44: "In the daj^s of these kings shall 
the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall 
never be destroyed : and the kingdom shall not be 
left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and 
consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for- 
ever" — be an aionian kingdom. This implies a 
very long period of time, but not endless duration. 
The prophecy is generally supposed to refer to Christ's 
kingdom, his mediatorial reign ; but this is to end. 
We read (1 Cor. xv. 24-28): "Then cometh the 
end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to 
God . . . that God may be all in all." From that 
moment, his mission being accomplished, Christ will 
cease to be a mediator, and his kingdom be involved 
in the eternal reign of God. The long aion has 
terminated. 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 187 

Other aions (English, ceons) of great length are 
mentioned in the Bible, though not so long as the 
duration of Christ's kingdom. For example, Canaan 
was given to the Jews for an everlasting possession ; 
the Aaronic priesthood was to be everlasting ; and 
the Mosaic law, with all its ritualistic details, was to 
be everlasting. These aeons embraced many centu- 
ries, but finally came to an end. Gehazi was to re- 
main a leper forever ; and the slave who at the year 
of Jubilee did not wish to become free was to remain 
a servant forever. In these two cases the axon meant 
simply during the remainder of life, — a lifetime. 
Jonah was in the great fish three da} T s, } T et he said, 
"The earth with her bars was about me forever." 
This aeon lasted only three days ! We find in the 
New Testament the phrase u for ever and ever," — 
Latin, secida seculorum ; Greek (Rev. xiv. 11), 
aionas aionon. If one ever does not imply endless 
duration, a thousand added evers would not equal 
eternit3 T . In the copious Greek language there are, 
it is said, a dozen different phrases that indicate 
absolute endlessness. Instead of using one of these, 
Jesus employed the indefinite word aionios to de- 
scribe the punishment of the wicked. If he meant 
endless punishment, why did he not say it emphati- 
cally? He did not mean it. 

3. More important and conclusive than all else is 
the connection in which the passage under examina- 
tion occurs. It is at the end of a long discourse 



188 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

given b}' Jesus to his disciples as he sat on the Mount 
of Olives, facing Jerusalem. It embraces the twenty- 
fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew's Gospel. 
Jesus had said that the temple would be so entirely 
destnrved that not u one stone upon another" would 
remain. The twelve did not doubt the truth of the 
Master's statement, strange as it seemed ; but they 
cared less for the temple than for the kingdom which 
Christ was soon to establish, in which they were to 
share his glory ; and, vaguely surmising that his as- 
sumption of royalty, the destruction of the temple, and 
the end of the existing state of affairs were to be simul- 
taneous events, they eagerly asked him, " When shall 
these things be, and what shall be the sign of tlry 
coming and of the end of the world ? " The trans- 
lation of one word in this question is very unhapp}', 
and it has led man}' to wrong conclusions. It is the 
word world. There is no proof that the disciples at 
that time had any idea that either the solid earth, or 
the human race on the earth, would ever come to an 
end ; and the}' did not inquire about such unthinkable 
events. Thoughts of the new kingdom filled their 
minds. The word they used was aion. This word 
never means "the earth" or " the human race " ; and it 
should never be so rendered. It does mean " age," 
and in the margin of the Revised Version of the New 
Testament the phrase " end of the world" is ren- 
dered " the consummation of the age." This is right. 
The revisers clung to the common version with heroic 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT, 189 

tenacitj", but their honest}' compelled them to give in 
the margin the true sense of the original. The ques- 
tion was, therefore: u When shall these things be, 
and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the 
end of the age ? " — the then existing, Mosaic, sinful 
age. To this question, and this alone, Jesus replied 
in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of 
Matthew. 

It is true, many commentators assert that for a 
time the Saviour does talk about the destruction of 
Jerusalem, the downfall of the Jewish nation, and 
the inauguration of the Christian dispensation ; but 
suddenly he leaves that subject, and describes the 
last scene in the solemn tragedy of earth and man. 
But why the transition is made, and where the break 
occurs, it is not easy to decide. Any careful reader 
of these two chapters must see that the connection 
throughout is close and perfect. It is said, in refer- 
ence to the horrors attending the siege of Jerusalem 
(Matt. xxiv. 21), "Then shall be great tribulation, 
such as was not since the beginning of the world to 
this time, no, nor ever shall be." If Jesus meant 
what he said, no other miserv will ever be worse. 
(Matt. xxiv. 29, 30) "Immediately after the tribu- 
lation of those clays shall the sun be darkened, and 
the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall 
fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens 
shall be shaken ; and then shall appear the sign of 
the Son of man in heaven : and then shall all the 



190 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

tribes of the earth mourn, and the}' shall see the 
Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with 
power and great glory." Whatever ma}' be meant 
by these Oriental figures of speech, the tremendous 
scene was to occur " immediately after the tribulation 
of those clays," — that is, a short time after. (Matt. 
xxiv. 34) " Verily I say unto you, This generation 
shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." 
A more explicit statement than this cannot easity 
be made. It makes clear the fact that the coming 
of Christ in power and gloiy was then near, close at 
hand. We are sure of the time, — it was eighteen 
hundred years ago ; and w r e are now ready to con- 
sider the events that transpired on that great occa- 
sion. (Matt. xxv. 31, 32 et seq.) "When the Son 
of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy 
angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne 
of his glory : and before him shall be gathered all 
nations : and he shall separate them [the nations] 
one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
from the goats." Then follow the details of the 
judgment, as it is called, ending with the statement, 
" These shall go away into everlasting punishment ; 
but the righteous into life eternal." Thus Jesus 
fully answered the question of his disciples, stating 
the time, the signs, and, in part, the results. 

An attempt to explain the highly wrought, fig- 
urative language employed by the Teacher is not 
in the line of this argument; .the manifest facts 



EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT. 191 

are sufficient for our present purpose : (1) The 
time in which all these events transpired was more 
than eighteen centuries ago. (2) ""The end of the 
world " w r as the end of the Jewish dispensation. 
(3) The coming of Christ in gloiy was not the 
visible appearance of a person descending from the 
clouds, but the inauguration of the Christian dispen- 
sation. (4) The events all took place on the earth, 
among living people, and not in the spiritual realm. 
No resurrection of the dead is mentioned. (5) Na- 
tions, and not individuals, were separated and judged. 
(6) The rewards and punishments — the aeonian 
life and its opposite — were earthly and temporal 
affairs. (7) Christ still occupies the throne of his 
glory, the judgment is ever going on, and the events 
of history are verifying the prophec}\ Every nation 
and person that is imbued w^ith the Christian spirit 
is enjoying life eternal ; while those who do not pos- 
sess that spirit are suffering seonian punishment. 

Finally, whatever aionios may mean, it is not 
often applied to the doom of the wicked. Neither 
endless misery nor endless torment is mentioned in 
the Bible. The phrase " eternal death " has no place 
in the Bible. JEonian damnation is not alluded to 
in the Revised Version. Why this reticence? Can 
any evangelical Christian answer? We need have 
no fear of a fate of which the Word of God does not 
give clear and repeated warnings. 



192 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 



XIX. 

ENDLESS MISERY. 

" God grew dark with utter wrath ; and in the grasp 
Of His almighty strength, took them upraised, 
And threw them down into the yawning pit 
Of bottomless perdition, ruined, damned. 

A groan returned, 

As if all misery, all sorrow, grief, 

All pain, all anguish, all despair, which all 

Have suffered or shall feel from first to last, 

Eternity had gathered in one pang, 

And issued in one groan of boundless woe." 

Pollok's Course of Time, book iv. 

XT OT being able to remember any passage of Serip- 
ture suited to the subject of this chapter, we give 
as a substitute the above seemingly appropriate quota- 
tion from a once popular English poem. It portrays 
the beginning of endless woe so clearly, eloquently, 
and honestly, that every reader, whether believer or 
unbeliever, ought to be entirety satisfied. 

The object of the preceding chapters in this book 
has not been to disprove or deny the doctrine of 
endless misery, but simply to show that it is not 
taught in the Bible. We have carefully and candidly 



ENDLESS MISERY. 193 

examined the strong texts, phrases, and words re- 
lied upon to prove this doctrine, and found that 
not a single one of them can honestly be pressed 
into its service. Yet it is a solemn fact that a large 
majority of the people called Christian profess to be- 
lieve that man}' millions of keenly sensitive souls, 
our brothers and sisters, will be indescribably un- 
happy forever ; and that this frightful doctrine is 
believed not onlv bv the ignorant and callous, but 
also by multitudes of. highly cultured, pious, and 
tender-hearted men and women. Moreover, it is 
distinctly taught in many pulpits, Sunday-schools, 
books, magazines, and newspapers ; and to doubt its 
truth is, in many churches, deemed heresy. 

We do not feel inclined to censure people for be- 
lieving in this awful dogma, or to affirm that they 
refuse to use their reason or to shun investigation. 
On the contrary, we sympathize with them ; we 
honor them for their adherence to what the}' deem 
true ; we extend to them the hand of Christian 
fellowship, and easily find several good and strong 
reasons for their holding fast their faith in endless 
miser}'. Some of these reasons the spirit of kind- 
ness requires us to consider ; yet, lest we should 
seem offensively to speak of others, we prefer to 
give the reasons for our disbelief. 

We do not believe in the doctrine in question, be- 
cause its awfulness, its infinite horror, is too vast for a 
finite mind to grasp. Possibly a great many profess 

13 



194 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

to believe it who do not try to comprehend it. In the 
old Greek mythology Prometheus is represented as 
chained, hands and feet, to a rock. Unable to protect 
himself, vultures came every day and tore out his 
vitals, which grew again every night. The pain, of 
course, was excruciating ; but for him there was no 
rest, no change, no hope. Imagine millions of human 
beings compelled to endure, if possible, a more intense 
agony, and among them your parents, companions, 
children, whose bitter anguish must continue on, on, 
on, without a moment's cessation or a ray of hope, 
through all eternity. Possibly some people are so 
constituted, so hardened by sin or so refined by grace, 
that they can think of all this with composure, 
profess to believe it, and praise God for His great 
goodness ; but to us the thought is sickening and 
unbearable. We sink in sympathetic agony, and 
must either doubt the doctrine or become insane. 
We accept the benefit of the doubt, and save our 
reason. Not choice, but necessit}', leads to our dis- 
belief. 

Again, we are led to doubt this doctrine because 
it is a pagan doctrine, and has the cruel air of hea- 
thenism. In the savage period called the Dark Ages, 
all Europe believed it. It was the motive power that 
worked the enginery of the Inquisition. Islamism 
is aflame with everlasting fire. Mythology teaches 
it. The old religions of Asia are lurid with burning 
hells. All this may not be thought of or cared for 



ENDLESS MISERY. 195 

by the average believer in the awful dogma ; but 
the fact that it is indigenous in paganism, that it is 
congenial to savages, and that it flourishes among 
people that have no Bible and no conception of the 
one true God, certainty suggests grave doubts of its 
truth. 

That portion of revelation contained in the Old 
Testament, in the opinion of all scholarly theologians, 
does not teach the immortality of man, much less 
immortal suffering. Persons who are not aware of 
this fact, but believe that the writings of the ancient 
Prophets contain many a text proving the doctrine of 
unending woe, should not be blamed for cherishing 
that article of their creed. But the reticence of the 
Prophets and the silence of God on this subject, His 
neglect for four thousand years to warn sinners to flee 
from the wrath to come beyond the grave, suggest 
an abiding doubt respecting the existence of such a 
wrath. 

But the New Testament? Well, the doctrine in 
question is not distinctly taught in this portion of the 
Word of God ; for, if it were, controversy and doubt 
would not have begun. Great plainness of speech is 
possible. No one doubts that John Calvin believed 
in and taught the doctrine of endless punishment ; 
but there has long been, and there still is, a sharp 
debate going on among students of the Gospel on the 
question, " Do the writings of the Apostles teach an 
unending woe for sinners ? " Without indistinctness 



196 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

in the text no such debate would be possible ; and 
the neglect of the Apostles to state the matter clearly 
must and does suggest a doubt of its truth. But 
more than this, in the preceding pages we have ex- 
amined, as many others have before, every nook and 
corner of the New Testament wherein the doctrine 
has been supposed to lurk, and have failed to find the 
faintest trace of it. What can we do but disbelieve ? 
Those who in childhood were frightened or coaxed 
into a church that professed to believe this doctrine ; 
who have often heard it taught in the pulpit by be- 
loved pastors ; who have often read it in religious 
books and papers ; who have not time, opportunity, 
or brain to make a thorough investigation ; and who 
might be expelled from the church, lose caste, and 
perhaps suffer financially by any change in religious 
opinions, — should not be too severely blamed for 
clinging to their early impressions. We are not of 
that unfortunate number. 

The fact that many Christians in the first two 
centuries of our era hoped for the final restitution of 
all sinners, and that many learned and pious men 
and women in our day still indulge in this sublime 
hope, leads us to doubt the vindictive theories of dark 
ages and ignorant people. All good beings would 
like to have all sinners converted and saved. This 
is a fact of hopeful significance. It is written. " God 
will have all men to be saved." Jesus said, " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and 



ENDLESS MISERY. 197 

I will give you rest." Charles Wesley, in this sweet 
verse of the u Convert's Hymn," voiced the feelings 
of all genuine disciples of Christ : — 

" Jesus all the day long 

Was my joy, and my song 

Was redemption through faith in his name. 

Oh that all might believe, 

And salvation receive, 

And their song and their joy be the same." 

Every missionary movement is an expression of the 
same excellent desire. Every true prayer of the 
Church is for the salvation of sinners, even all sin- 
ners. Are all these holy desires to remain unsatisfied 
forever? We hope not. 

The entire uselessness of unending misery is also 
to be taken into consideration. Any unprejudiced 
person can see at a glance that it would not do any 
good to its victims, that the sight or knowledge of 
it would not benefit the saints or angels, and that it 
would add no glory or honor to Christ or God. It 
would be only an eternal nuisance in the universe, 
which, it seems to us, the wise, mighty, beauty-and- 
order-loving God cannot and will not tolerate. The 
annihilation of the wicked would be far better. Be- 
sides, it would be a manifest injustice and fiendish 
cruelt}^, wholly repulsive. The laws of all civilized 
nations, and also the Divine laws set forth in the 
Bible, provide that each criminal shall be punished 
according to his deeds, — for light offences, a small 



198 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

penalty ; for great crimes, severe punishment. This, 
all men approve as just and right. Endless punish- 
ment would be an infinite penalty; and no one sin, 
nor any number of sins added together, can equal in- 
finity. Such a penalty would therefore be unjust and 
cruel. Only continual sinning can deserve continual 
punishment ; the guilty deeds must keep up with the 
penalty, or the balance of justice be lost. And this 
is the theory of modern Orthodox}', — eternal sin 
and eternal woe. But here comes in the cruelty. To 
permit a finite soul to sin and suffer forever is infinite 
cruelty. To crush out of existence a sinner in danger 
of such a fate, or to paralyze his ever}' faculty, would 
be tender meixry ; to permit him to go on sinning 
and suffering eternally, diabolic cruelty. We can- 
not believe God to be as heartless as the Satan of 
superstition. 

The doctrine of endless sin and punishment im- 
peaches the wisdom, goodness, and power of the 
Supreme Being. In the remote past there was a 
time when there was no sin, no human being, no 
habitable earth ; but God meditated the creation of 
earth and man. To sa}' that He did not foresee the 
fate of the human race before He created Adam and 
Eve, is not only to charge Him with a lack of fore- 
sight, but also with a deficiency of common sense. 
That the young, weak, ignorant, tempted first pair of 
human beings would make mistakes, blunder, and do 
wrong, was absolutely certain. This the All-wise 



ENDLESS MISERY. 199 

must have known ; yet, knowing it, He called into 
existence a race millions of whom, He knew, would 
forever sin and suffer. Was this wise? Would you 
have done it? To affirm that He did knowingly and 
deliberately inaugurate an immense amount of eter- 
nal sin and woe, is equivalent to declaring not only 
that He is not all-good, but also that He has some 
exceedingly bad traits of character. To assert that 
He did foreknow that men would sin, and many for- 
ever suffer, yet was obliged to create earth and man, 
is to deny His almighty power. It is not true. He 
was subjected to no pressure. He could or He could 
not create man, just as He pleased. If He was not 
at liberty to do as He pleased, then there is no Al- 
mighty. We are not prepared to take this step into 
atheism ; and to claim that from " before the foun- 
dation of the world " God in His great mercy pro- 
Added the means whereby some would be saved, does 
not mend the matter : the Creator of the lost must 
still bear the blame. He must have foreseen that 
vast multitudes of sinners would never hear the name 
of Christ, nor be in the least benefited by his mis- 
sion to earth. The only solution of the problem of 
sin that is honorable to God and comforting to man 
is that it w T ill ultimately end. God's children were 
made to be, designed to be, foreordained to be, at 
last and forever holy and happ} T ; and the}' will be. 
God is all- wise, all-good, almighty ; and though we 
may not comprehend the mystery of evil, we may 



200 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

rest assured that the Divine plan will be carried out 
in every particular, and all His children will " glorify 
and enjoy Him forever." 

It was reported that Kobert G. Ingersoll began 
one of his lectures by saying, "I hate God." If he 
meant that he hated the Being, real or imaginary, 
that created immortal souls to sin and suffer without 
end, can we blame him for the harsh statement? 
Such a Being we could fear, and bow down to in 
prayer and verbal worship ; but we could not love 
or even respect Him. We need not go back to the 
creation of our first parents ; for Him to permit 
thousands of children to be born every clay, and 
live to adult age with scarcely a probabilit}^ of con- 
version before death, does not seem to us kind or 
wise. He did in one night smite all the first-born 
in the land of Egypt ; He can do the same now ; 
and not to kill in infancy all children in danger 
of being lost if they grow up, seems like a lack of 
mercy. 

If all souls are not finally saved, Christ's mission 
to earth was a sad failure. He was sent, and he 
came, to seek and save the lost, — to save the world. 
All needful power was given him to do this glorious 
work ; he tried ; lie gave himself a ransom for all ; 
he tasted death for every man : yet he failed. A 
few he has saved ; many more he will save : but the 
majority, even in lands nominally Christian, are still 
going down the broad road to destruction. Either 



ENDLESS MISERY. 201 

sinners were harder to save, or his grace, gospel, and 
death less potent, than was expected. Down, down, 
nevermore to rise, have gone, and are still going, a 
multitude that no man can number ; and the Saviour 
cannot prevent it. This we cannot admit. The 
Calvinistic blood in our veins protests against it. 
We cannot refrain from believing that eveiy soul he 
came to save, will be saved ; and that he came to 
save all, is now generally conceded. In either case, 
whether he was commissioned to save all or only to 
save a part, his success is assured. God would not 
emplo}' such a divine agent, and a failure ensue. 
If he was not sent to seek and save all the lost, — 
to " taste death for every man," to give " himself a 
ransom for all," — the partiality and the blame rest 
on Deity ; but if he was sent to be the Saviour of 
the world, there will be no failure : the world will be 
saved. 

These are some of the reasons that create our 
doubt of the truth of the doctrine in question ; and 
with these reasons meeting us at every turn of 
thought, we cannot do otherwise. Why so many do 
profess to believe in endless punishment, we know 
not : but it may be that many of its supposed adher- 
ents are silent doubters ; that many have not suffi- 
cient mental capacity to realize its enormity, and 
hence believe they know not what ; that many are 
entirely ignorant of the great and precious promises 
in the Gospel ; that many, like the late Rufus Choate, 



202 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

are willing to " accept what the Doctor teaches, 
without question ; " that some are cowardly, desirous 
to be on the safe side ; and that some advocate the 
doctrine just to build up their sect. God help us 
all! 



INTO THE LIGHT. 203 



XX. 

INTO THE LIGHT. 

"As in Adam ail die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." — 
1 Cor. xv. 22. 

/^NLY one more shadow can dim our faith. If the 
Bible does not clearly and repeatedly reveal the 
ultimate holiness and happiness of all intelligent 
souls, we are still out in the dark and the cold. Intui- 
tion, reason, the heart, the sense of honor and right, 
though thej r teach our doctrine, may have no clinch 
of logic that holds. It is conceded by all Christians 
that God, by prophets and apostles, and more than all 
by Jesus Christ, has spoken to us something in relation 
to our final destiny. If that something is onl} T a 
dubious hint or two, we may well doubt and fear ; 
but if He distinctly announces a glorious future for 
all, His announcement settles the question, and pours 
around us the clear light of eternal da}'. Our final 
appeal is therefore to the Word of Gocl. We have 
not time or space to quote all the passages that 
teach this sublime truth of universal salvation ; but 
we will cite enough to banish all doubt from the 
minds of the candid. 



204 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

In our examination of the Scriptures, we are for- 
cibh r impressed with the allism (to coin a word 
that exactly expresses our meaning) that pervades 
the entire book. For all human beings there is one 
and the same moral law, call to repentance, throne of 
grace, and Father in heaven. God is no respecter 
of persons. In His pure sight, all men have sinned, 
and all misbelieved ; all were weak, all were tempted, 
and all needed a Saviour. All were worth sav- 
ing ; and means were employed to save all, if possi- 
ble. All Christians except rigid Calvinists (if there 
are any) admit and believe this. Notice now how 
this allism constitutes the essential element, the very 
soul, of many important passages. 

1 Cor. xv. 22 : " As in Adam all die, even so in 
Christ shall all be made alive." In, through, or 
by our first parents, a calamity fell upon the entire 
human race. Saint Paul calls this calamity death. 
In the old nursery-rh\~me we were taught that 

" In Adam's fall 
We sinned all." 

Precisely in what the misfortune consisted, is of 
no consequence to our argument ; its universality is 
beyond question ; and so, also, is the counteracting, 
remedial influence of God in Christ. In, through, 
or by Christ shall all be made alive. Some benefit, 
some blessed change, comes to all in the great plan 
of redemption ; and the good is coextensive with the 
evil. In each member of the sentence, the allism 



INTO THE LIGHT. 205 

is absolute, — " all die," "all be made alive." This is 
enough for our present line of thought ; the uplifting 
influence overmasters the depressing influence. 

But light breaks in from another statement of the 
Apostle. He says (2 Cor. v. 17, 18): " If any 
man be in Christ," — and to be alive in Christ is the 
same thing, or more, — "he is a new creature: old 
things are passed away ; behold, all things are be- 
come new. And all things are of God." In other 
words, entering into the spirit of Christ, or being 
made alive in Christ, is a great change for the better. 
The old, dark, dreary condition vanishes ; the man 
becomes a new creature, and perceives that he is 
in a divine realm, wherein God is all in all. His 
change, his condition, his salvation, is perfect. And 
all who die in Adam (that is, absolutely all human 
beings) are thus to be made alive in Christ, and 
thus attain the new condition, — salvation from the 
old, the dark, and the sinful. When, where, how, 
this is to be done, we may not know ; it is enough 
that all shall be made alive in Christ. Saint Paul 
uses the strongest language possible ; and we are 
unable to imagine how any candid reader can avoid 
feeling that universal salvation is clearly taught by 
his unequivocal statement. 

1 Tim. ii. 4 : "God will have all men to be saved." 
In the Revised Version : " God willeth all men to be 
saved." Sinners alone need to be saved ; and the 
evident meaning is, God willeth all sinners to be 



206 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

saved. This is a very broad and strong statement. 
If He is merely willing that all men shall be saved, 
if He does not oppose the salvation of all, we may 
hope that Jesus Christ will succeed in saving all. If 
God wishes to save all men, — if He has any, even 
the slightest, preference in favor of the salvation of 
all, — our hope ripens into certainty. All His wishes 
and preferences are sure to be gratified. But when 
the absolute will of the Infinite is announced, when 
He willeth (will have) all men to be saved, there not 
being in the universe any thing or being that can in 
the least or for a moment hinder Him from doing 
and having just w T hat He pleases, — the ultimate 
salvation of all is a foregone conclusion, an absolute 
certaintv. If all men are not to be saved, whv was 

i 7 v 

the pen of inspiration allowed to indulge in state- 
ments so positive yet so delusive? 

Immediately following this glorious revealment is 
another instance of Gospel allism. 

1 Tim. ii. 6 : "Christ gave himself a ransom for 
all." The same idea is expressed in Heb. ii/9 : " We 
see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the 
angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory 
and honor ; that he by the grace of God should taste 
death for every man." This does not prove that all 
men will be redeemed by the ransom or saved by 
the death ; but it does prove that God is in earnest 
about having His way and doing His will. 2so half- 
measures, no limited means, are employed. He sends 



INTO THE LIGHT. 207 

His Son to be a ransom for all, to die for all, to 
save all, because He willeth all to be saved. 

In the same chapter there is another specimen of 
allism (1 Tim. ii. 1) : "I exhort that, first of all, sup- 
plications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks 
be made for all men." These prayers were not to be 
a solemn mockery, mere formal utterance of words, 
but sincere, earnest petitions. Anything less than 
this in prayer is unapostolic and unchristian. In 
praying for all men, the only appropriate petition is, 
so far as we can see, to ask for their conversion from 
sin and error, and their forgiveness and salvation. 
We have heard clergj-men intercede for the Divine 
blessing to be bestowed upon all "for whom it is 
right to pray." Of course it would be needless and 
even w r rong to pray for those doomed to remain un- 
blessed forever. But Paul, Timothy, and their co- 
laborers were troubled by no such scruples. This 
does not necessitate a favorable answer to the praj^er, 
— God knows best what is best, — but it does show 
very clearly a strong hope in the final salvation of all 
mankind. 

It is barely possible that in these three remarkable 
statements Saint Paul meant to say that God will 
have some to be saved, that Christ gave himself a 
ransom for some, and that we should pray for some ; 
but we prefer to believe that the Apostle made no mis- 
take, that he meant just what he wrote, and that he 
more than intimated a holy, happy future for all men. 



208 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

Phil. ii. 9-11 : " God also hath highly exalted hini 
[Jesus], and given him a name which is above every 
name : that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and 
things under the earth ; and that every tongue should 
confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
the Father." The great family of mankind is at last 
of one mind and heart. All devoutly kneel, and all 
confess the supremacy of Christ. There is not a 
doubter or an unbeliever among them. It is not said 
they will then all be holy and happy. Some perhaps 
may kneel and confess by compulsion, and thus God 
be able to enjoy, like an infinite Nebuchadnezzar or 
Nero, the pageant of a humbled race. But if the 
words of Isaiah are rightly translated, and refer to 
the same event, the affair will be more than a vain 
show ; it will be a manifestation of deep and J03-OUS 
feeling. He says (Isa. xlv. 22-24): "I am God, 
and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the 
word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness, 
and shall not return, That unto nxe every knee shall 
bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, 
in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." A 
soul that can saj-, with all the force of an oath, that 
it has righteousness and strength in the Lord must 
be a saved soul ; and all souls will make that asser- 
tion. But, to put the matter be}"ond doubt, Saint 
John in his wonderful Patmos vision says (Kev. v. 
13) : " Every creature which is in heaven, and on the 



INTO THE LIGHT. 209 

earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the 
sea, and all that are in them, heard I sa}'ing, Bless- 
ing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto Him 
that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb 
for ever and ever." All intelligent beings unite in 
this ascription of praise ; all do it with a zest ; and 
all are apparently satisfied and happy. Ingenious 
and profound theologians may find some waj T in 
which the "every knee, every tongue, and every 
creature," mentioned in these three sublime passages, 
may signify only a part of the human race ; but we 
are content to take the plain, common-sense view of 
the case, and to rejoice in the glorious prospect set 
before us by Isaiah, Paul, and John. 

At the birth of Jesus an angel said to the shep- 
herds (Luke ii. 9, 10) : "Behold, I bring }'ou good 
tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a 
Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." We are one of 
the people ; and we can honestly say that if Christ 
is only to open the wa} r whereby some may be 
saved, and many are not to be saved, and this is the 
last and only chance for salvation, the good tidings 
is to us not joyful, but painful. But if the good 
tidings is that the new-born Saviour will effect the 
salvation of all souls from sin and woe, we are filled 
with great joy, and can heartily sa}-, with the angel 
host, " Glory to God in the highest." 

Many other convincing passages might be quoted, 

14 



210 THROUGH THE SHADOWS. 

and many other arguments employed ; but these are 
sufficient for our purpose. We have emerged from 
the shadows, wherein are doubt ariS fear and torment, 
into the clear light of the Gospel, wherein are cer- 
taint} T , peace, love, and joy ; and we thank God and 
take courage. 



University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



022 190 357 2 



H 



BBS 



is§§ 



Ktfl 



m 






m* 



K88 



